Hell may not, whatever Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote, be “other people,” but other people, or what’s left of them, certainly conspire to mess up the second half of “I Am Legend,” a movie that was, until then, developing into one of the finest science fiction movies of recent years. In his retelling of Richard Matheson’s harsh, hallucinatory novel from 1954, director Francis Lawrence is brilliantly successful in re-creating the book’s postapocalyptic vision of a survivor hanging on to life, and the remnants of civilization, in a city that is intact — but not — and where he is alone — [...]

It is a measure of the genius of the British novelist Philip Pullman that when, less than 30 pages into his book “The Golden Compass,” 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua angrily objects to the refusal of her (supposed) uncle Asriel to take her to the frozen, fabled northlands, most readers will understand and agree with her. “I want,” protests Lyra, “to see the Northern Lights and bears and icebergs and everything.” And so, you just know, do you. Disappointingly, despite some excellent special effects (the bears, a race of gigantic, heavily armored ursine warriors, have to be seen to be believed) and [...]