`Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'.(Chicago Tribune)

If you want to see how close computers can come to replicating humans on screen _ and how far they still have to go _ take a look at "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," which blurs the lines between live-action and animation, movies and computer games, and lyricism and tedium.

One of the film's first shots, aside from a futuristic planet landscape that suggests a discarded Yes album cover, is a close-up closeup of a woman's green eye, and the image is more striking that you might imagine. Director Hironobu Sakaguchi, who also created the popular Final Fantasy computer game, and his crew of designers have given this eye the spark of life, with its convincingly liquid surface and the intricate detail of the lashes, lids and surrounding skin.

When the "camera" pulls back to reveal this young woman, Dr. Aki Ross (voiced by Chinese-American actress Ming-Na), who somewhat resembles a young Linda Fiorentino, you continue to be thrown by how …