The Golden Compass

Chris Weitz, 2007 (7.7*)
Major fantasy effort based on Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials”, and it looks to be the first part of a proposed trilogy. A spunky Dakota Blue Fanning stars as a girl who has a prophetic part to play in changing this fantasy world as she is the only one who can read the truth-telling compass of the title, which has two hands and cryptic symbols.

Daniel Craig, out of normal character, plays her protective scientist uncle, at odds with a bureaucratic controlling body called the Magisterium, who fear the influence of “stardust” on children (an oblique drug reference? a reference to outside or alien energy invading our bodies?).

Nicole Kidman takes Dakota under her wing, and they begin a long journey to the north pole with a beautiful zeppelin flight; they created a beautiful imaginary world for this. Compass mixes everything from that to armored fighting bears to stardust (but not that of the Neil Gaiman novel and film of that title), in the classic fantasy vein of the Narnia trilogy. Excellent Oscar-nominated special effects, down one star for violence (maybe too intense for pre-teens), in particular a polar bear fight; hey, I love nature!