You’ve probably noticed that a new calendar year has started. I caught wind of it when I realized that another year of my life had gone by and I hadn’t accomplished anything. Oh well, the truth is that as we roll through 2008 we are – you got it – another year closer to Armageddon, baby, yeah! And that can only mean that rats are closer than ever to their ascendance as the new masters of Planet Earth. How else can you explain the success of a movie like Ratatouille? Yes, an animated kid’s movie (crafted to appeal to parents, too) about rats in the kitchen can only be a covert attempt to soften us up for their eventual reign of furry, skittering terror.

Not that Ratatouille is terrifying, by any means. It might be terrifying that the wife and I decided to ring in the New Year by watching it – sans kid – as our bleak-but-amusing celebration, but that’s another story. (Kids, don’t become parents, it’s all I’m saying.)

Bird, in Ratatouille, continues to use the animated format to tell engaging fables that speak intelligently to adults while dazzling the kids with goofy antics. It’s a delicate balancing act, as such stories like this and The Incredibles, would be almost impossible to pull off as live action dramas, (without relying on tons of CGI anyway) but would otherwise be too far over kids’ heads as straight cartoon fare. Bird has a knack for spinning simple object lessons into feature-length dramas that are neither pedantic nor cloying. With Ratatouille, it’s a decidedly more-mellow mix. The laughs (for adults) are generally milder, and the action (unlike that of the dizzying Incredibles) is sedate – after all, how much can you jazz up a professional kitchen without bringing in Gordon Ramsey?)

It’s ultimately a pleasantly likable tale that runs brainy rings around other CGI yuk-fests, with a genuinely tear-jerking finale and an awesome note to those like me that write about this stuff, as the restaurant make-or-breaker critic Anton Ego sums up his position in the scarfing order of life. As you huddle in your post-apocalyptic bunker, listening to the skritch-skritch-skritching at your door, pop these rats in your outmoded DVD player and think of better times.

Here’s another take on the day after, (if you will) filled with plenty more CGI creations that don’t bode well for the next generation of Earth dwellers. As a child of the late-‘70s to early-‘80s, I’ll always most strongly identify with the Heston-Sting double rabbit punch known as The Omega Man. That would be the second movie adaptation of Matheson’s I Am Legend and the utterly ominous Police song from Ghost In The Machine. Nothing gets me more jazzed for imagining what a weird and lonely playground the world will be, post-apocalypse, for those of us ‘lucky’ enough to survive. But then the wife and I went out for our annual movie in a real theater (hey, we’ve got a 20-month-old girl, give me a break) and chose to see I Am Legend starring Will Smith, and now I don’t know what to think.

It’s becoming an ill-conceived tradition during the month of December, apparently, for us to see movies filled with extreme tension, sadness and peril-to-children – which of course rocks us mightily as we think of our own little moppet. In the case of I Am Legend we’re a voyeuristic party to Robert (Smith) Neville’s desperate existence on the deserted island of Manhattan - three years after a virus kills 98% of the world’s population, while leaving the few survivors to become the instantly doomed prey. Neville hangs on hoping to find a cure for the virus, while otherwise killing time with his dog Sam. Such a lonely idyll can’t last forever, though, as those not killed by the virus have become insanely rabid creatures (ala 28 Days Later) intent on eating everything – and setting their sights on Neville.

I Am Legend flat-out rocks as amazing scenes of Neville motoring around deserted Manhattan alternate with a number of other motifs. Tension ratchets as Neville and Sam hunt wild deer through abandoned by-ways, dodging the occasional loose lion. At home Neville’s pathetic isolation, smartly sketched by Smith, is an horrific counter-point; outside is meaningless nothing, inside only fading memories and sadness. One wonders how Sam, seemingly oblivious to the changes, puts up with it. At night, Neville dreams of the terrifying chaos as the virus-infected world begins to shut down, and families are torn asunder. By day he tries to catch rabid zombies to experiment on. These scenes are a lesson in how to shred theater seats, as Neville creeps slowly through darkened buildings serving as zombie nests, or runs through crowds of desperate refugees, barking orders at the military.

As for adding hope, maybe that’s OK; audiences still aren’t ready to take black-as-night death-trips (especially in movies starring Will Smith that open during the Christmas season).

Apocalypse lovers and tension junkies will gobble up I Am Legend, a movie with enough grueling set pieces and realistic desolation to fuel a weekend’s-worth of nightmares. Will Smith turns in a breakout performance that proves he’s not just a good-looking, affable, action-hunk. And the rats and the zombies are happy to note that we’re finally giving credence to the day when humans no longer are allowed to mess up the Earth. Soon it will be time to let some other creature do that.