The Golden Compass

12-year-old Lyra (Richards) lives in a world similar to Victorian England and ruled by the church-like Magisterium, who seem dead set on controlling the minds of everyone in the world and eliminating free will. When best friend Roger (Walker) disappears, Lyra, alongside a strange assortment of allies including a talking, armored bear (McKellan) and a pilot with a Texas accent (Elliot), travels north to rescue him, despite the Magisterium and their ice-queen agent Ms. Coulter's(Kidman) best efforts to stop her. The all-star cast is exceptional, but the story may confound without the book as a roadmap. The film stirred a mild controversy because of the anti-religion themes of the book upon which it was based (the first installment of Philip Pullman's popular British fantasy trilogy), even though writer/director Weitz mostly cut those parts from the movie.