Ms. Coulter has NOTHING on Anton Chigurh. For that matter, she had nothing on David Straitharn in The Bourne Ultimatum.

Who's Anton Chigurh? And I thought Mrs. Coulter was a better villain than the one in Bourne Ultimatum (and I thought BU was a much better movie than TGC btw). I just really loved Kidman's portrayal of Coulter.

Anton Chigurh is the villain in No Country for Old Men, and frankly, he'd be able to blow a whole through Mrs. Coulter's head without breaking a sweat.

I saw it and enjoyed it. I'll be adding more thoughts later.

zzz. Levy's comment is pretty right, the talking just goes on and on and on. It's commits a movie's worst sin, it's downright boring. It WAS all set-up - and I was completley disinterested.

The dialogue is shit. Full of clunky fantasy and a hero will rise! cliches. Things dragged on too long.

The CGI was bad. I liked the city and the polar bears, but the companion animals/demons? Awful. It's one thing to make shiny robots, but I think we're still a few years away from talking animals not looking like shit. Or maybe the CGI crew just sucked, who knows. They really should've just used live animals who didn't talk, it's not like Pan's dialogue actually contributed anything to the movie, I sure as hell wasn't more attached to him. They probably could've saved like 100 million in budget that way too.

Dakota Blue Richards was charasmatic, but to be honest that's all this movie had going for it. Kidman didn't impress me. Craig just disappeared. The voice actors didn't fit their animals. The old guy from Ghost Rider's role was way too big. Eva Green was the one character who seemed to fit into her role and didn't feel like ______ actor playing evil, but she didn't do much.

Again, it's just a boring movie. I couldn't care less about the characters, storyline, or subplots like McKellen's because it was obvious what would happen, as cool as the animality was.

After the Potter films, Lemony Snicket, Narnia, and The Golden Compass, I never want to see a little kid saves the magical kingdom fantasy adaptation ever again. I haven't seen a sub-genre this bad since they started making video game movies.

D-

so many of you are just so eager to hate greatness

Right on!!!

Finally some other true believer's who can see that dust really does exist. Don't let the naysayers bring you down...

Heh, that's a conclusion to be applied to most novel adaptations (not all, though).

Also, I liked this one a tad more than the first Potter flick which is possibly the case because I had much higher expectation for Scorcerer's Stone.

Pretty much yeah. By "butchering" I just meant messing up and having all the things that made the book so special mostly disappear.

Now I make this film sound worse than my grade and my actual review will be, but I really hoped they would succeed with this one, especially with a rather solid director and a great cast and all... It didn't seem too hard to adapt, IMO.

C+


Had I been a bigger His Dark Materials fan, I'm sure I would have been far more let down by this adaptation of the source. I found The Golden Compass to be an interesting novel. It's complex, with good characters, a nice flow and some very innovative and interesting writing. Pullman's style is great. The book could have used some more excitement to bolster the story, but I ended up being satisfied wit it and looking forward to the adaptation by Chris Weitz. Now granted he's never taken on a project of such magnitude, but then again, neither has Peter Jackson before LOTR and I liked his take on About a Boy which, while differing from the source material, still kept the spirit of the novel and made for a great little flick.

On Wednesday, I came out of The Golden Compass sorely disappointed and shaking my head at the movie's ending. I will touch upon this issue first and foremost. Now I realize that the novel's ending is dark and leaves us much rather with a cliffhanger than with a happy ending, but that's what made it so great and made me wanting to read the second novel all the more. It was a perfect ending and a fitting conclusion to Lyra's journey that gives her motivation for her further actions. Leaving it out and concluding the film on an open, but rather happy note hurt it a lot, in my opinion. And it's not like they didn't shoot this ending. I could obviously see several shots of the original ending in the trailers. Too bad they wussed out.

Speaking of missing scenes, I have no clue how the rest of the Trilogy, in particular the final movie will work out without any mention of the church (which they replaced with the "Magisterium") since the whole trilogy builds on that entire issue. That's like shooting Lord of the Rings without the ring or Harry Potter without Voldemort...bleh. Some other things were lacking that might hurt the upcoming chapters of the story as well (like the lacking mention of Stanislaus Grumann). In my opinion, the movie simply should have been a good 16-20 minutes longer. As it was, it just seemed like a best-of compilation of some cool scenes from the book, just jumping from one of them to another and someone not familair with the novel could care less about the proceeedings.

The last, but not least, the movie failed to estabilish an all-important fact from the novel which is how important daemons are for the people in this world and how important their constant connection is. Then again, it's probably something that hardly transcends to the big screen.

Now enough of the ranting, since in fact it's more my disappointment than actual hatred for the movie that speaks out of me. Technically, it is mostly well-done. I loved the set pieces and the art direction. The costume designer probably deserves an Oscar nom as well. The visual effects were pretty good, at least better than those in Narnia (though as a film, Narnia was better) and some of them were truly impressive (like the polar bear effects during the fight and generally). Most daemons looked very photorealistic, so I give it props for that. It just seemed like the entire world Pullman created was brought perfectly to the screen, only lacking its soul, but certainly matching the looks.

The acting was solid all-around. Dakote Blue-Richards surprised me the most by far as she made a perfect Lyra, exactly the way I imagined her when reading the novels. She's probably the single best thing about the whole movie as she hits all the right notes of her character. Nicole Kidman impressed me as well as I found her to be a great Mrs. Coulter, though her screentime was sadly limited.

I wish I could say that the upcoming movies in the trilogy will improve on this as the basis that is set is rather good than bad, but with Weitz at the helm, I somehow doubt that.

All the talk I have heard is how bad this movie is. So going in I had low expectations. Walking out I thought the movie was ok start to a trilogy(if they make the other two). The story kept me involved/confused and the CGI was rather poor. All the actors did a fine job especially the little girl. The pacing was a little slow and left me wanting more action. But all in all it wasn't bad.

C+

Well I saw it and I thought it was good but it could have been a lot better. I probably give it a B+ or a B- although if I had read the books I imagine I would give it a worse grade.

The postives
The special effects were great, I loved the ice bears scene in particular.
The Ice Bear fight is the highlight of the movie, it is pretty impressive.
The active overall, Sam Elliott, Nicole Kidman and the actress that played Lyra all had very good performances although Elliott was the best of the three. Of course that isn't a shock because he is great in everything.
Cons
Here are the problems with the film. First they crammed too much into such a short running time. This film need to be 2 and half hours. Sure two of the Harry Potter were able to have short running times but they did but taking story out and by the time you get to Part 3 and 5 of the story you know these characters. This is the opening film in this saga and you really need to introduce characters and plot better. It was very hard to follow what was going on and by the time you caught up they threw several more plot points at you. Also the pacing seemed to be off at times. There were scenes that didn't flow together made you think things were missing. This was most true with the ending. It did seem like there should have been another 10 minutes leading to something else but ended pretty abruptly.
Overall, I liked it but I am not sure if I could recommmend seeing it in Theaters. I would say wait and rent on DVD.

What sucks is I don't think the sequels will get made, I guess I am going to have to read the books which isn't a bad thing.

I disagree. It's definitely a big screen theatre movie...

for sure.

GOLDEN COMPASS

GRADE - B

I've never read the books and knew very little going into the film other than the "controversy" and that there were fighting bears in it. I found the film to actually be pretty interesting to watch. It went at a fairly quick pace as well. I enjoyed the story overall and liked the introduction to the magistarium?, kidman's char, lira, the bear and the dust. My favorite scene I think was when Lira was pretending to be a daemon to the bear king and tricking him into fighting her bear one on one. The "kill" move during the battle was also a highlight. Didn't much get the importance of the Witches other than they were part of a prophecy involving a young child. I didn't mind how the film ended as it was setting up a 2nd film which I'm actually interested in seeing. Overall, it was a decent film that sets up a 2nd one nicely.

Wow this is getting a lashing. Sounds terrible. I'll definitely not waste time to see it then.

It's not Lord of the Rings.
It's not Stardust.
It's actually barely even Harry Potter, but that's not a bad thing. LOTR, Stardust and Harry Potter are recent fantasy successes for a good reason - they are fantastic to an extreme. So the fact that I consider this on a similar level to Harry Potter, not quite as good as the recent Potters but certainly far superior to the first one - shows that I enjoyed it.

It's about the same as, if not slightly better than Narnia which I gave a B/B- largely due to Tilda Swindon. But Nicole Kidman challenges Tilda as an Ice Queen here, Mrs Coulter becomes a menacing, slithering, smouldering presence who superseeds the entirity of the cast combined. Eva Green also shows great promise in her short time on screen - with beauty beyond what i had credited her for in Casino Royale.

Daniel Craig is okay. And Dakota Blue Richards is fairly good for a debut, better than Radcliffe in Potter's first. But the film suffers from iffy pacing and its obvious a lot is missing from the film that should have been there.

That said, I really enjoyed it. Kidmans performance made it all that bit better, the visuals were astounding and the film itself was really enjoyable on quite a few levels.

I was left wanting more at the end, and feel like if franchised, things could only get better, and the few problems it had could easily be ammended in future flicks. Too bad they didnt produce a trilogy here ala Rings, it could have been a great one.

I'd give it a solid B. If a film is enjoyable but doesn't strike me as special, it will usually get a B- or a B from me, so i think this is fairly generous.

Word of Mouth from theater: Solid
Word of Mouth from reivews: Weak
General WOM: Decidedly mixed.

You're right, it's definitely a movie we've been instructed not to like, and there's certainly no need to ask why, just keep watching the latest POTC disc over and over, and stop all that foolish thinking...

The movie is awesome absolutely awesome, the lashing is from fools.

The movie raped my pleasant memories of the book in the ass until it got hemorrhoids. Not a horrible movie, per se, perhaps a C+ or B-. From the perspective of having read the book, however, the movie barely earns a D. This isn't like LOTR, where the films surpassed the books in many regards. HDM requires too much exposition to make sense, and is therefore a practically unadaptable series.

I really wish I didn't see this movie.

I've never read the books. I had never even heard of the books until the press around the film began. After watching the film I have no desire whatsoever to even look at the books in a book store. With the exception of the first 30 minutes which are actually somewhat interesting, this film is just awful. It's like a light switch. Like Korrgan said, as soon as Lyra leaves with Ms. Clouter, the film just stops working. I didn't care about anyone. It's all talk and no fun, and the action scenes we do get border on the lines of the absurd. The polar bear standoff is one of the most jaw droppingly bizzare things I've ever seen. I can't really explain it. There's just no tension and the scene never jumps off the screen. They're just two awkward CGI polar bears duking it out. What the fuck?

As for the stars of the film, talk about a gigantic waste of talent. Daniel Craig is in the film for five minutes. He's good in those five minutes, but who cares? And what the fuck was with his hair? It goes from short, to really short, to Bond-ish looking (like it is now) in all of his time on screen. And he's only in three scenes! They just didn't shoot all of his scenes in a row?

*See these are the kind of thoughts that run through my mind when there's nothing interesting happening on screen.*

Then we've got Nicole Kidman. She's on automatic pilot mode. Never once did she convince me she was sinister. She's just kind of annoying. And as for Eva Green and Sam Elliot; cameo and extended cameo. Fantastic. That leaves us with Dakota Blue Richards. I know it's not the best thing to critique child actors, but she's not great. She can't express any emotions. She's just kind of wooden. She showed promise and if there's a second film she'll find her stride, but the chances of a second film now are pretty much non-existent. Hopefully some people will take notice of her and she'll go on to do another film.

Just to touch upon the ending though - I loved it. I laughed hysterically when the credits came up. After sitting through 70 minutes of pretty much nothing, the film doesn't have an ending. It just assumes that people will see this in droves and they'll leave us wanting more.



D

They stopped making sense some time ago, and now they're working themselves up into a cataplexy - - the worst will be over soon. After that they'll need our love and support to get them back on the road to recovery...

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You're living a lie bradley. I don't know who brainwashed you into thinking those two hours were coherent or fun, but it's simply not so.

Amen brother. Though the polar bear fight was my favorite part of the movie, if only because everything else was so goddam flat and boring. Kind of like how emo Peter was the best part of SM3. I'm pretty alone there though.

That really stinks -- now the name is sullied, and the books can't even vindicate themselves. The movie had about as much magic as my toilet brush after a diarrhea overflow.

People, if you didn't like the movie, STILL GIVE THE BOOK A TRY. It's 100000000000000000000x better than the movie. It's better than LOTR. Trust me, you'll love it.