BABYLON A.D.

Rating 2 1/2

Babylon A.D. is a really cool futuristic film buried beneath a lot of schlock you've seen before. Several times during the movie I wished the filmmakers would just let the characters hang out for a while and see what happened, rather than pushing them ever-forward to justify more chase scenes.

Action stalwart Vin Diesel stars as Toorop, a mercenary living in exile in New Serbia. He's pressed into service by Gorsky (Gerard Depardieu, featuring enhancement of his already comic-book facial features), who wants him to transport a girl back into America. He picks up the girl, Aurora (Melanie Thierry), outside a remote convent with her keeper, sister Rebecca (Michelle Yeoh). At first the nun instructs Toorop to protect her from "seeing, hearing and feeling" impossible in a near-futuristic world where UFC-style fighting and thrash metal reign.

Thrust into their journey is a cool submarine sequence, followed by an awesome snowmobile chase as they head across the Bering Strait for "Kitimat" (which should bring a chuckle from locals). They're headed for New York City--current population 32 million--to deliver the gifted Aurora to her artificial intelligence pioneer and pseudo-religious guru parents (Lambert Wilson and Charlotte Rampling). But any interesting moral and political questions raised in Maurice Dantec's book Babylon Babies have been hastily and unsatisfactorily pieced together in the last act.

The verdict? Children of Men did it much better.

Special features include interviews with cast and crew, several behind the scene featurettes, trailers, still galleries, a deleted scene and an odd assortment of Babylon A.D. fake commercials.

--Julie Crawford

CITY OF EMBER

Rating 3 1/2

The people of Ember have been living below ground for 200 years, while all manner of apocalypse apparently raged above. Now they are precisely at their expiration date, and the hulking generator that powers the crumbling city is heaving its last breaths.

Two youngsters won't go quietly. Doon (Harry Treadaway) is determined to find an alternate way out of Ember and sneaks off from his new job in the pipeworks as often as possible to explore Ember's labyrinthine tunnels. Lina (Saoirse Ronan), a direct descendant of one of the original mayors of Ember, thinks there is a way out, too. In her dotage, her grandmother mutters about finding an old box. Once Lina finds it and the clues within, the present mayor (Bill Murray) and his henchman (Toby Jones) hunt her down to see what she knows.

Based on Jeanne Duprau's best-seller for youth and directed with care and deftness by Gil Kenan (up for an Oscar last year for his animated Monster House), this film is aimed at--and appropriate for--an older child audience, though the themes about community, dictatorship and environmentalism will get grown-ups thinking, too.

The story is engaging, the action fast-paced and the sets are jaw-droppingly detailed. Some visual effects work better than others, and the ending is too hasty to leave viewers completely satisfied. The young leads are excellent, and the star power of supporting cast members (Martin Landau, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, among others) is impressive. The film may do better in DVD release than in its surprisingly lackluster theatrical run. The biggest surprise of all is that there are zero special features accompanying the disc.

--JC