A scene from 'Frozen' Disney

Disney is at it again with a prince, a princess and a queen in "Frozen." In one sense, then, this animated feature for the holidays is frozen in the studio's fairy tale past. Yet the film transcends its various borrowings and occasional stumblings with a modern, exuberant spirit that draws heat from Broadway-style musical numbers and, before and after everything else, from marvelous 3-D animation. The superstars here are the animators. If you thought there was only so much to be done with ice and snow as visual fields, think again along the lines of prismatic crystals, epic storms and fantastical structures built on water's gift for freezing itself into see-through art.

During the preprince preface, two young princesses in a kingdom called Arendelle command most of the attention: Anna and her older sister Elsa, who are voiced respectively, and beautifully, by Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel. In the screenplay that Jennifer Lee based ever so loosely on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen"—Ms. Lee also directed, with Chris Buck —Anna is a sweet little scamp who grows up to be a joyous woman, while Elsa has a superpower that's a curse. She's a cryogenic Carrie, or a female version of Frozone, from "The Incredibles." Whenever she's swept by strong feelings, she fires off subzero salvos ranging from icicle daggers to sheets of ice that can hurt, kill or, as is the case after she becomes queen, turn her kingdom's radiant summer into shivering winter.


The early part of the film is peculiarly rushed, a pastiche of plot points that are ticked off rather than developed. But it does establish the sisters as polar opposites, and rings in the first of the songs, by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, that give the story its buoyancy and dramatic clarity. Anna, the cockeyed optimist, falls in love as soon as the prince of the piece appears—his name is Hans, and he's unquestionably though generically handsome. Elsa, unable to suppress her lethal power, leaves her throne for a snowbound mountaintop, where she'll do her subjects no further harm. Reduced to its narrative essentials, "Frozen" is the tale of Anna's journey to find her sister and free the kingdom from what threatens to be eternal winter.

Comic relief crops up, of course, en route. Anna's traveling companions are an earnest rustic named Kristoff, who cuts and sells ice for a living (his business has taken a hit from the local climate change); Kristoff's mute but savvy reindeer, Sven; and a funny little snowman, Olaf, whose habit of detaching and reassembling his body parts recalls Mr. Potato Head from Pixar's "Toy Story" trilogy. A creature of Elsa's magic powers, Olaf doesn't understand that warmth isn't his friend. This is perilous for him but good for us, because he gets his own musical number, a charming song-and-dance routine in which he dreams a dream of radiant summer.

Imperfections crop up too; this film won't be mistaken for one of the animated classics that Disney was turning out in the 1990s. A couple of consultations with a gathering of rocklike trolls is one too many. Anna's dual attachment to Kristoff and Prince Hans blurs the story's focus, since it has her chasing between her sister's mountain and Arendelle. And Elsa's supposedly fierce guardian, a gigantic snowman called Marshmallow, is a nondescript monster who should have been sent back to the drawing board.

Reduced to its emotional essentials, however, "Frozen" comes up strong, with several surprises. Anna isn't one of them. She's exactly the free spirit she seems to be, and all the more endearing for it. But Hans is more complicated than he seems. And Elsa's plight speaks, and sings, to the pain of isolation. Always a good girl as a child, rigidly perfectionist as a young adult and terrified of unleashing the full force of her feelings, she's a heroine for our times.

'Get a Horse!'

All theatrical showings of "Frozen" will be preceded by "Get A Horse!," a six-minute short in 3-D by Lauren MacMullan. It's a little marvel, and not so little when you consider the ground—and the space—it covers.

At first we're confronted with what seems to be a sweetly primitive Mickey Mouse cartoon from the 1930s, hand-drawn in black and white, with Mickey voiced, as he was in the early days, by Walt Disney. Far from being primitive, though, it's a delightful postmodern creation, and audio remix, in which Mickey, Minnie and their friends burst out of the screen into color and 3-D, then chase back and forth between the auditorium and the cheerful pandemonium of their black-and-white world. Stepping out of the screen isn't new in itself. Buster Keaton did it in 1924 in "Sherlock Jr." and Jeff Daniels did it six decades later in Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo." But one of the many astonishments of "Get A Horse!" is how it epitomizes the history of animation, cinema technology and, by not such a huge extension, motion-picture entertainment. Ms. MacMullan is the first woman to have sole directorial credit on a Disney animated film. Here's to her stepping out soon into full-length features.

Watch a clip from the film "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom," a chronicle of Nelson Mandela's life journey from his childhood through to his inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. (Photo/Video: TWC)

'Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom'

A long walk indeed, and sometimes a pedestrian one, that devotes 141 minutes to a survey of Nelson Mandela's whole life. But the big attraction of this respectful biopic, or tribute reel, is the superb performance Idris Elba in the title role. At almost 6 feet 3 inches, he's too big for physical similitude, but big enough in dramatic presence to measure up to his character's courage and moral stature.

"Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" was directed by Justin Chadwick from a screenplay by William Nicholson. Starting with Mr. Mandela's first stirrings of radicalism as a young lawyer in the segregated Johannesburg of 1942, the film traces his growth as a public figure. It also follows the parallel emergence of the African National Congress, first as a public protest group and then as an underground movement of freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on one's point of view, in the wake of successive slaughters of black citizens by South Africa's murderously repressive government.

Winnie Mandela is played by the excellent Naomie Harris, who doesn't have a lot to do for a long while, apart from being a loving wife and mother. Ms. Harris becomes a force in her own right, though, once Winnie embraces the violence that her husband has renounced. (Their eventually bitter split is handled gingerly, almost cryptically.) Mr. Idris discharges his obligation to his subject's inimitable speech pattern; the slower he speaks the more authoritative he becomes. Something of the same happens to the film. The frenzied history of South Africa's racial strife certainly makes its mark, but the strongest sense of Mr. Mandela's noble intransigence comes during the slower passages of his imprisonment on Robben Island, when the hostility of the guards personifies the implacable, and doomed, policy of apartheid.

Watch a clip from the Spike Lee film remake of "Oldboy." Obsessed with vengeance, a man (Josh Brolin) sets out to find out why he was kidnapped and locked into solitary confinement for 20 years without reason. (Photo/Video: FilmDistrict)

Josh Brolin in 'Oldboy' Film District


This remake of Park Chan-wook's Korean horror fest was hardly destined to be life-affirming; the original achieved cult status with a level of stylish violence that was not for the weak of stomach or heart. But the new film, directed by Spike Lee and written by Mark Protosevich, is so ugly as to be life-draining. Josh Brolin is grimly impressive as Joe Doucette, a misanthropic ad executive who, in 1993, wakes up from a drunken night on the town to find himself imprisoned in a grungy hotel room. Why is Joe there, and why must he remain there for 20 years until he emerges as a killing machine? It's a convoluted tale of revenge, with Sharlto Copley as an effete—and ultimately silly—villain, and Elizabeth Olsen as an angel of mercy. But why would we want to watch a chronicle of Joe's agonies, and the agonies he gets to inflict on others? Passing it up would be the best revenge.


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'Iceman' (1984)

Frozen inside a block of glacial ice for 40,000 years, a hunter is set free, in a manner of speaking, when scientists doing research in the Arctic thaw him. Then the nameless hero finds himself a prisoner in a giant improvised terrarium, where, like Truman Burbank in "The Truman Show," he senses doings and beings beyond his ken. If the premise sounds ever-so-slightly improbable, John Lone's performance in the title role is phenomenal, and persuasive. The cast, which includes Timothy Hutton and Lindsay Crouse, was expertly directed by Fred Schepisi.

'Invictus' (2009)

Nelson Mandela played by Morgan Freeman, who isn't better or worse than Idris Elba, only superb in different ways. Clint Eastwood's inspirational film finds Mandela newly installed as president of a postapartheid South Africa that's still in racial turmoil. To help unify the nation, Mandela embraces the most unlikely of popular causes, a rugby team, called the Springboks, that has been a symbol of white supremacy. Matt Damon is the captain of the Springboks, who defeat a supposedly invincible New Zealand team to win the 1995 World Cup championship.

'District 9' (2009)

Sharlto Copley is sensational as a white supremacist who learns what it's like to be nonhuman in this crypto-apartheid fable. The setting is Johannesburg, where a spaceship has been parked in hovering mode for 20 years after disgorging its occupants. They, blighted creatures, have been living in slums, and treated by whites as subhuman. The action begins when the government decides to transfer them to areas strongly resembling South Africa's notorious townships. Neill Blomkamp directed from a screenplay he wrote with Terri Tatchell.

Write to Joe Morgenstern at joe.morgenstern@wsj.com