Not quite "bah, humbug," but....

Jim Carrey helps turn Scrooge into a classic sourpuss.

It's technically impressive, full of fine voice work and early-picture magic. But Disney's A Christmas Carol (sorry Charles Dickens, you've been squeezed out of the title) ultimately substitutes action for the heartbreaking emotion and giddy uplift of Dickens' classic holiday tale.

How technically impressive? If you see A Christmas Carol in 3D, you may be wowed by the ability of director Robert Zemeckis and his legion of artists to create depth in ways that enhance the viewing experience for those not content with standard-issue illusion.

But Zemeckis' performance-capture technique (also employed in The Polar Express and Beowolf) isn't enough to make A Christmas Carol better than any of the many versions that already crowded television screens and theaters. Beyond that, there's something creepy and unreal about the results of performance-capture that makes it impossible -- at least for me -- to forget that I'm watching an elaborate bit of cinematic gimmickry.

The movement of characters often seems a shade too slow, and I keep asking myself, "Why not animate the entire movie or do a live-action version?" (I'm partial to the British feature that starred Alastair Sim as Scrooge, but believe Jim Carrey, whose voice talents are on display in this project, would have done a masterful job with the part.)

The Scrooge on view in Zemeckis' holiday bauble is a stooped old man with a hooked nose and pointy chin. He sometimes looks vaguely like Carrey. Gary Oldman (as Bob Cratchit, Marley and Tiny Tim) does equally well with the movie's voice work. Colin Firth (as Scrooge's nephew) and Bob Hoskins (as Scrooge's first boss, Mr. Fezziwig) also are up to the story's voice demands.

Zemeckis moves his camera with agility and does plenty to justify the use of CGI and 3D, but for me, the movie -- engaging at first -- inspired increasing resistance. Sure, this approach lends itself to booming sound effects and various action set pieces, but the movie proves more eye-popping than enthralling.

As for those ghosts who visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve: They're more like fun house effects than the voices of admonition that have populated better versions of this venerable and much-told Dickens' tale. Is it possible to be overwhelmed by technique and underwhelmed by storytelling at the same time? It was for me.

How crazy can the Army be? Very

Yes, it's a man staring at a goat.

According to The Men Who Stare at Goats, the U.S. Army at one point began an operation known as The New Earth Army. Led by a drugged-out, hippie officer named Bill Django, the warriors of this disheveled group tried to develop psychic powers, including the ability to make themselves invisible.

Generally, these warriors of the mind sought to use brainpower to avert the worst violence. The title of the movie -- and the Jon Ronson book on which it's based -- derives from another trick that these "hippie" warriors attempted to master: the ability to stop a goat's heart simply by staring at it with death-ray intensity.

I'd warn against trying such experiments at home, but I'm fairly certain few of you have goats on which to practice. And I'd certainly advise against it the next time you take the kids to a petting zoo.

The Men Who Stare at Goats stands as a loopy indictment of the insanity of a military that's always looking for a competitive edge -- no matter how absurd. In pursuit of this goal, director Grant Heslov -- working from a script by Peter Straughan -- introduces us to a small-town journalist (Ewan McGregor) who loses his wife to his editor and decides that he needs a testosterone affirming adventure.

McGregor's Bob Wilton heads for Iraq in hopes that a stint of combat coverage will restore his credentials as a man. After arriving in Kuwait City, Wilton finds himself thwarted. He's stranded in a hotel, where all he can do is look enviously at the big-time journalists who have been embedded with troops, men and women with real stories to tell.

But Bob's fortunes change when he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a guy who claims that he's headed to Iraq on business, but who once belonged to the New Earth Army. As it turns out, Cassady was a premier psychic and devotee of Django (Jeff Bridges), the drugged-out warrior who founded this whacky battalion and who believed that soldiers could be trained to walk through walls, providing they had enough psychic juice.

Unlike Bob, the movie isn't content simply to make it into Iraq. As Cassady and Wilton travel through Iraq, we're offered flashbacks showing how these psychic warriors were selected and trained. We also learn that Django's command was undermined by a jealous sergeant (Kevin Spacey), the kind of insufferable guy who always needed to be at the head of any class.

Cassady isn't a guy who believes in chance. He thinks he has hooked up with Bob for a reason, namely that Bob, too, is a Jedi Warrior. The journalist remains skeptical.

Maybe that's more plot than you need, but the most interesting parts of the movie involve its bizarre -- and possibly true -- events. At the outset, a title card informs us that more of the movie is true than we might imagine.

Clooney can play this kind of comic part in his sleep. I'm not suggesting that he sleepwalks through the movie, only that the role probably fits him a little too perfectly. McGregor spends much of the movie looking flabbergasted, and Bridges seems to have channeled a bit of his shambling, dissolute Big Lebowski character into a military setting.

The acting is good and breezy, but the movie feels episodic and skimpy, and by the end, you may feel shortchanged. Could it be that the filmmakers were so impressed by the idea of psychic warriors that they forgot to develop a compelling plot? Whatever the case, The Men Who Stare at Goats serves up some tasty appetizers, but pretty much forgets to bring on the main course.

Danger lurks in the forest of 'Antichrist'

Charlotte Gainsbourgh consoled by Willem Dafoe.

The worst thing, I suppose, would be to make a cause celebre out of Lars von Trier's Antichrist, an increasingly repellent and often shocking portrait of a deteriorating marriage.

Most of Antichrist takes place in a forest cabin located in an area called Eden. Any evocation of that other famous garden must have been purely intentional on von Trier's part, but who knows precisely what von Trier had in mind with the rest of a moody, dream-like movie that's at its best when it's being most elusive.

After Breaking the Waves, Dogville and Dancer in the Dark, one is primed for the indigestible where von Trier is concerned. In that sense, Antichrist breaks no new ground for the director and only shores up his reputation as an artist who views the world as a cesspool in which humans can be counted on to behave abominably. Why lie? Some days, I think he has a point.

If you read about movies, you probably know that the movie isn't easy to take: It culminates in a lengthy helping of brutal violence involving castration and self-mutilation. Prior to the bloodshed, a talking fox (no, I'm not kidding) tells us "Chaos reigns." As if we didn't already know.

So what leads to all this cruelty and bloodshed? You might guess that things begin to go wrong because of sex. In the movie's opening scene, a husband, known as "He," is having sex with his wife, known as "She." They're too preoccupied with their ardor to notice that their young son has climbed onto the window sill in another room and is about to fall to his death, a tragedy presented by von Trier in reverential slow motion. The music may be Handel, but this black-and-white sequence plays like a twisted rock video for a group that might be called Falling Babies.

Once the toddler exits the scene, von Trier is stuck with two grieving parents about whom we know nothing other than that they're capable of entangling their body parts. To the extent that there's a plot, it can be summarized thusly: He and She head into the woods, presumably to be alone with their grief, fear and torment or something. He, a psychologist of some sort, treats She as if she were his patient, constantly encouraging her to face her fears. She evidently has a different coping mechanism, preferring to drown out life's sorrows with groping sexual encounters.

She's also an academic who has studied witchcraft, which adds another dimension of possible evil in a world that's fully corrupted and pushes the movie toward what turns out to be an ample helping of misogyny.

You can tell that Antichrist is seriously intended because it has ominous chapter headings: Grief, Despair, Gynocide and The Three Beggars being examples. You'll have to see learn about "gynocide," providing you're able to look at the screen throughout the carefully calibrated mayhem that von Trier orchestrates.

Gainsbourgh won an acting award at Cannes, but cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who also shot Slumdog Millionaire, may be the movie's real star. Mantle does some great work in the woods. The movie is supposed to take place in the American northwest, but actually was shot in Germany. Mantle is exceptionally skilled at forebodings, and for a while, the movie seems to be building toward something important: two bereft people adrift in an intolerable forest. He's annoyingly solicitous and She tries to accommodate him.

Von Trier also provides food for thought: Why does He (Willem Dafoe) treat his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourgh) as if she were a subject in a therapeutic experiment? Why does She stand for it? What sort of relationship do these people have? Are they meant to suggest a particular couple or are they some reincarnated version of Adam and Eve? And what about the movie's title, anyway?

Both Dafoe and Gainsbourgh give themselves over to the work, an act of submission that can be interpreted either as a demonstration of extreme courage or simple bad judgment, depending on how the movie strikes you.

Are the ideas expressed in Antichrist worth the ordeal? What exactly is von Trier trying to say? Those are questions you can debate after seeing the movie. I'd say, though, that the Antichrist suffers from a more rudimentary problem than arty obfuscation.

Von Trier reportedly set out to make his version of a horror movie. If he really wanted to play around with a conventional genre, he should have watched a few more horror movies. It seems to me that, among other things, von Trier forgot to include a second act, leaping from the build-up of act one to the insane violence of act three.

Even had it established a better rhythm, Antichrist might not have been able to live up to the promise of its artfully imagined early scenes, but it at least would have had dramatic coherence. This could be a case in which a director sabotaged what might have been a brooding, powerful movie by undermining its eerie, suggestive qualities with ghastly helpings of violence.

Late in the picture, She drills a hole in her husband's leg. We need this? It's as if the late Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian director and proclaimed cinema poet to whom the movie is dedicated, got sick of digging deep and decided to make Saw IV.

There's no messing with Bronson

Tom Hardy as Bronson, a performance you won't soon forget.

Bronson is not the story of Charles Bronson, the tough guy actor who starred in Death Wish and who died in 2003. No, Bronson is a souped-up portrait of a man who acquired the reputation of being the most violent prisoner in Great Britain.

Michael Peterson, the man in question, was given the name Charles Bronson while working as a bare-knuckle fighter in British clubs and back alleys. But Bronson isn't known for his employment record. He's known, the movie informs us, for having spent 34 years in the slammer; 30 of them in solitary confinement.

If Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's film has it right -- and it feels as if it does -- Bronson's proclivities go beyond those of ordinary criminals. He's depicted as an uncontrollable force of nature, a man who takes his violence seriously.

Refn seems to regard Bronson as a theatrical presence in a mundane world; perhaps that's why he interrupts the film with sequences in which Bronson appears on a stage, addressing an audience. For his part, Bronson tells us he always wanted to be famous. The real Bronson has written books and shown works of art, but on screen, he remains a kind of unredeemed savage. You get the feeling that if you met him, you'd be afraid. Very afraid.

Sometimes, an actor will do things that go well beyond easy comprehension. In playing Bronson, actor Tom Hardy gives just such a tour de force performance: It's a feat of extreme physicality and unremitting will. As portrayed by Hardy, Bronson seems resistant to any kind of help. This is a man whose DNA seems coded for anti-authoritarianism.

To support his actor, Refn puts other skills on display. Cinematographer -- Larry Smith -- knows how to compose an interesting shot, and accepts Refn's challenge of mixing the brutal naturalism of prison scenes and the stagey artifice of theater scenes that sometimes have Bronson talking directly to the camera; i.e., to us. He also uses music that often goes against the grain of his images -- from Verdi to Wagner to Puccini and the Pet Shop Boys.

Bronson's life plays out in vivid bursts. At one point, he returns to the civilian population, having served a stint in an institution for the criminally insane. He quickly falls in love with a woman (Juliete Oldfield) who's engaged to someone else. He begins his fighting career.

But Bronson soon returns home; i.e., he's back in jail. Bronson seems poised for redemption -- and the movie seems headed for cliche -- when an art teacher (James Lance) notices his talent. Even the justly skeptical warden -- a cerebral Jonathan Phillips -- begins to buy into the idea that Bronson may have the right stuff for reclamation. But Bronson remains true to his idea of himself, and the movie retains its integrity. Here's a man who never met an opportunity he wouldn't willfully screw up.

Bronson isn't for everyone. It's not for those who require psychological explanations of behavior. It's not for the squeamish. And at times, the picture comes on like a flurry of Bronson's punches. Bam! A little biographical information. Bop! Some prison mayhem. Bam again! Bronson on stage trying to turn himself into a form of primal entertainment.

However Bronson ultimately defines itself, it's anything but dull. Refn makes the most of Hardy's performance. And when the movie's finally done, you may feel as if you've been in the ring with a heavyweight who has gotten the best of you. I'm not entirely sure what you'll learn from the experience, but you won't soon forget it.

Bronson opens in Denver on Oct. 30.

Michael Jackson in concert -- almost

Judging by his reputation, Michael Jackson had many personalities. We got a glimpse of one of them when we learned about Jackson's personal Xanadu, Neverland Ranch. We saw another when Jackson was forced to drag himself into a Los Angeles courtroom as the cable TV cameras rolled. Over the years, we watched Jackson grow up or maybe we watched him not grow up, but in the broadest sense, two Jacksons seem indelibly sketched on a pop canvas that spread over four decades: Michael Jackson, freak and Michael Jackson, entertainer.

It's the latter Michael Jackson who's on view in This Is It, an exciting concert film assembled from more than 100 hours of video footage shot during rehearsals for Jackson's London show, the one he was on the verge of opening when he died last June at the age of 50.

Shot in high definition and equipped with a masterfully recorded soundtrack, This Is It reveals little about Jackson, the man. It's not so much a backstage documentary as an on-stage documentary, a series of performances, many of which seem fairly polished. It makes you wonder. Maybe for Jackson, there were no off-stage moments.

Of course, there are rehearsal-level compromises. The dancers and Jackson mostly aren't wearing the costumes that were being prepared for the show, and at various times, Jackson sings softly to preserve his voice. He also gives instructions to his keyboardist and musical director, telling him to play a lick as if it were dragging itself out of bed. At another point, he asks for more funk from a bassist, but there are few unguarded Michael moments on view.

Expect no diva-like tantrums or major revelations. What you get is music and a taste of how lavish the show might have been.

Late in the proceedings, Jackson introduces an environmental theme: He expresses a love for trees that would have made Joyce Kilmer blush. This environmental rap sounds as if it had been recorded elsewhere and slipped into the film to allow for a transition to a performance of Jackson's Earth Song.

Still, it's almost as if director Kenny Oretega -- who also directed the stage production -- knew that a documentary eventually would emerge from all the video footage, which we're told at the outset originally was intended for Jackson's personal use.

Skillfully combining footage from various rehearsals, Ortega gives us relatively seamless numbers, where none may have existed. And Jackson fans will take a musical journey that includes favorites such as Thriller, Billie Jean, Man in the Mirror and even a splashy tribute to the Jackson Five.

Those unfamiliar with Jackson's concerts may be surprised by the scale and apparent expense of productions that become inseparable from the music. Thriller, for example, mixes live performance and 3-D horror footage shot for the occasion. Smooth Criminal makes use of Rita Hayworth's sultry performance of Put the Blame on Mame in Gilda.

There's also lots of dancing -- from Jackson, as well as from dancers who seemed thrilled to have the opportunity to perform with the King of Pop and who serve as a kind of impromptu claque when Jackson performs alone.

I'm not sure how This Is It would have stacked up against other Jackson tours, but the movie is entertaining, and it does justice to Jackson, the entertainer.

Is there something exploitative about a film that follows quickly on the heels of Jackson's death? Probably. But This Is It serves as a reminder that whatever else Jackson may have been, he was one hell of a performer. His fans will turn out, and I doubt that they'll be disappointed. I wasn't.