Sherlock Holmes

There's no denying that Avatar is going to lose most of it's luster on small-screen DVD viewing. Factor in the reality that continual improvements in visual effects are going to render it's groundbreaking techniques obsolete within a few years, and it's a good bet that Avatar will be remembered, if at all, like The Jazz Singer is today; as a technical milestone, not a film. Sherlock Holmes will similarly look a lot worse on DVD, when you're not in a theater full of relatives you're sick of talking to. But, it's definitely one of the best Christmas time-filler releases of recent memory. Robert Downey Jr. makes a bold choice, playing the iconic sleuth as a severely damaged social defective whose default expression is a sort of barely repressed panic. It's a smart move, because it makes his smarmy expressions of super-genius less obnoxious: he's clearly compensating for his inability to function without Jude Law's Dr. Watson. It's basically the House dynamic, with Victorian duds and some half-assed plot about Satanic peers and steampunk machinery. Guy Ritchie's vapid visual pyrotechnics are doled out sparingly enough to avoid calling undo attention to themselves, even if the Olde London Towne CGI looks like fresh-baked ass. Speaking of fresh-baked ass, Rachel McAdams, as Holmes' American paramour is completely out of her depth, not to mention given an underwritten, incoherent part to play. There's enough footage of Downey making dazzling deductive leaps to make it all palatable, especially if the alternative is eating leftover ham with the inlaws. Now, if the alternative is watching an actually compelling film on your Netflix queue, that's another story.