I Am Legend

I like Will Smith as an actor, and he shows some genuine talent here. I'm thinking of the scene where the camera focuses on his face while he's holding his dog off-screen, and we see him straining and his eyes welling up. And I also liked the scenes where he's talking to the mannequins he set up in the video store and around the city. At first he plays it like he's consciously doing it in an effort to keep himself sane, but as time goes on he plays it like he's not so sure anymore. It's a subtle shift and well done.

The rest of the movie, though, I can take it or leave it. I don't get a lot out of CGI. I always wonder how much better and scarier it would be if, for instance, the hemocytes or Darkseekers were real people. Granted they couldn't leap through the air like in here, but I think it'd look better. And as far as the zombie/vampire/survivalist genre goes, I think there are better films. One reason I like the "28 [time period] Later" series is that the action sequences are better filmed, with rapid close-ups of the zombies, great make-up and costumes, conveying a genuine sense of terror. Also, "Legend" seems to lack a coherent underlying social message that Romero has tried to explore in his series, like anti-Communism hysteria in "Night of the Living Dead," anti-commercialism in "Dawn of the Dead," and anti-fascism of "Land of the Dead." At least in "Legend," unlike in "The Omega Man," the film doesn't end with Robert Neville dead with his arms outspread in the Jesus Christ pose.

Another thought: one of the billboards in an early scene is for a new movie: the batman symbol with the Superman "S" inside. Would that movie be good? If it's like the new Batman series, yes. If it's like the new Superman series, no.