Just because the movies are animated doesn't mean the performances are

Busy week at the salt mines, even with the holiday. What can I say? Those Canadian prescription drugs aren't going to smuggle themselves into the U.S. ...

Still, I've managed to knock out a few below-the-radar movies from the last few years -- each intriguing in a different way, but with mixed results overall.

If only Winston Zeddemore was on the case: "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within"

I kid, but seriously, this movie and "Ghostbusters" aren't so different. You'll see.

Released in 2001, "Final Fantasy" apparently is "the first computer-generated animated motion picture with photo-realistic characters." In other words, it's a cartoon that tries to make the players look as real as possible. Why go to that trouble? Why not!

The story: In the future, the Earth has been attacked by "phantoms" that could end up being the end of us all. A skinny young scientist, her mentor and a bunch of commandos, including her ex-boyfriend, hope to find the solution to the phantoms and save the planet. Meanwhile, a nasty general wants to just blow the baddies up, even if it means the end of the world.

The story is OK, I suppose, although it's boring in multiple places and kind of just fizzles out in the end. (I also was sort of falling asleep, but I don't think this is on me.) The bigger problems are the cast and the look.

With the cast, you get some serious lack of continuity between the voices and the look of some characters. Sure, I can accept Alec Baldwin voicing a square-jawed soldier. But Steve Buscemi's voice in a young, clean-cut army guy? Even if he's still comic relief, it threw me off. Same with Donald Sutherland as the old scientist. We know what Donnie looks like, and it's not a short, bald guy with a beard. Maybe if the animation had been more typical, I'd be OK with this disjointedness. But when the movie shows us "real" people ...

And that's the other thing. For all the detail here, "Fantasy" looks ... weird. I should be impressed, but I was mainly disappointed that I wasn't dazzled. Oh, and the "Ghostbusters" thing. We get a lot of scenes with phantoms rising through the floors or emerging from walls. Try as I might, I couldn't shake the images of the ghosts that tormented Murray, Aykroyd and Co. If "Fantasy" had given us another appearance of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, it might have gotten a thumbs up.

Like Keanu has never been lost within himself before: "A Scanner Darkly"

Say what you will about Richard Linklater -- profanity has come to my mind in the past -- but the guy is hard to pigeonhole. You could look at this movie and "Waking Life" and say, hey, he's just into weird animation. You could look at "Dazed and Confused" and "School of Rock" and say, hey, he's all about dopey comedy. You could look at "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" and say, hey, he's one big p*ssy.

All that doesn't even cover stuff like "Tape" and "Fast Food Nation," or the mainstream "Bad News Bears" remake. So yeah, the guy gets around. "A Scanner Darkly" came and went last year, but I caught it on HBO this month, and I'm glad I did.

Everyone's favorite Neo plays an undercover cop in the near future who gets hooked on a drug and descends into some kind of identity crisis. It doesn't help that he protects his identity at times by wearing a suit in which the images of hundreds of other people dance across the outside. Gotta say ... it's pretty disconcerting.

Reeves' drug world includes the always entertaining Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Rory Cochrane and Winona Ryder. Yeah, Winona! And let me tell you ... she looks good! You saw the recent "Reality Bites" post. Back then, she got by on wide eyes and pixieish looks. But she's kind of filled out a bit in her 30s, let her hair grow long and generally looks hotter, I think. Ah, hell, maybe the shoplifting arrest has something to do with it, too. Gives her some edge.

But wait a minute. I need to step back when it comes to talking about how Winona and these other folks look. You see, "Scanner" is animated, but the characters look like the actors normally do, or would if it was live-action. It's like Linklater had animators trace lines around the actors and turn them into cartoons. Kind of odd, but I dug it, and I thought the movie, while slow at times, was mostly interesting. Good twist near the end, too. No, Winona isn't actually a man. ("I know all there is to know about the crying game ... ")

It's too easy. Oh, OK ... This sucked: "John Carpenter's Vampires"

Yes, Carpenter. Almost 20 years after "Halloween" and about a decade after "Big Trouble in Little China" and "They Live," this so-called mastermind of horror delivered yet another movie about modern bloodsuckers in the late 1990s. And while this isn't animated like the above two movies, it's a cartoon all the same, missing only the "Batman"-esque "POW!" and "BAM!" balloons.

Our hero is none other than James Woods. Yeah, James Woods! As the top dog vampire hunter, he again plays a guy who is pretty much a d*ck, dropping wiseass jokes and snapping at people. Let me consult his filmography ... yeah, while he's not been a total ass in every role, it's a good amount. But when you do something well ...

One difference here: Woods' somewhat comical appearance. Oh, nothing obvious. Just little things, like hair that obviously has been colored, and jeans that are a little too tight for a 50-year-old (now 60). Even so, you could do worse than watch JW chew some scenery for 90 minutes.

Our story is simple: Woods and his crew hunt vampires, but one night the baddest bloodsucker of them all takes most of his team down. So Woods -- with the help of the Church, his sidekick and a woman who's not far from becoming a vampire herself -- tries to track this master of masters. Hijinks ensue.

The usual Carpenter touches are here. One, there's about 10 minutes of mood-setting during the title credits. Two, there's plenty of blood, amputations, disembowelings and decapitations. Three, there are some throwaway funnies, such as when Woods asks a priest if he got, er, excited during a fight. Um, yeah ... don't answer that.

It's all rather dumb but perfectly acceptable late-night fare. We even have a Baldwin brother sighting: Daniel, who isn't half bad as Woods' No. 2. Do you know that among the Baldwins, he has only one fewer credit than big brother Alec? And check out how much Danny works these days. I gotta say, I never would have pegged him for being the most prolific guy in that family. Now I need to go do a rundown on Jeff and Beau Bridges and Macaulay, Kieran and Rory Culkin.