Avatar
This review is coming in a week late. Cindy and I went out to see James Cameron’s Avatar before Christmas. Already, I knew that this film had some mixed reviews from sources I trust, so, if we were going to see, let us see it on a IMAX Screen in 3D.
It was recommended that we arrive at the auditorium early to secure a good seat at the AMC Lynnhaven theater. The advice was gold: forty minutes prior to the film starting, most of the good seats were taken. I was able to secure a center seat, but, only in the fourth row of the second tier seats.
3D Movies
I am not a fan of 3D movies.
Lately, many of the animated films will be released with a 3D version that you can pay a few extra dollars to see. Very few mainstream films employee the technique. The last two films I saw in 3D were Beowulf and My Bloody Valentine. Neither film was very good, and the 3D was gimmicky.
Avatar’s approach to 3D felt different – it provided visual depth. The movie screen became a window that we were invited to look through.I don’t recall a moment where I thought “Oh, look, they are pointing at someone in the audience.”
I am still not convinced that I like wearing the 3D Goggles.
The Animation
Avatar blends live action and animation. I thought this looked a bit “video gamey” in the trailers. Sometimes, with this type of movie, there are distinct lines between the animation and the live action – they never quite blend together.
Once the film began, I found the animation was absolutely gorgeous and the live/animated scenes simply blended together in a very natural motion.
I think that the reason why it work in this case, and why it so often fails in others, is because of the story.
The Story
What is an Avatar?
In video games, an avatar is the in-game representation of the player. The game avatar is controlled by the player using a hand controller. Generally, the avatar can perform actions that are beyond the natural abilities of the player.
In the movie, technology exists for humans to take control of a specially grown, ten foot tall Na’vi referred to as an Avatar. The humans can control the Avatars remotely, but they are able to sense and experience everything that their Avatar sees, hears or smells.
The Na’vi are the natives of a planet called Pandora. This planet is a source of a valuable mineral, and a Company is strip mining the Pandora to obtain it. The scientist have been using the Avatars to interact with the natives, and teach them English. However, these Avatars are strongly distrusted.
Jake Sully is a paralyzed ex-marine who comes to Pandora to participate in the Avatar program. His mission is to convince the Na’vi to move from their homes so that the company can mine the mineral. Otherwise, a mercenary force hired by the company will use hi-tech force to displace the non-tech Na’vi.
Once Jake becomes integrated with the Na’vi, he falls in love with the Chief’s daughter who has been assigned to teach Jake the Na’vi ways. Jake finds that he is unable to finish his mission and teaches the Na’vi how to fight the Mercenaries.
As David Spade might say, “I liked Avatar the first time. When it was called Dances with Wolves.”
Political Undertones
I have heard a lot being made over the underlying political message.The Company (aka the Capitalist) is painted in broad evil stokes because they are willing to commit genocide in order to obtain the mineral.
Like the main story, this is not a new theme. Corporations are generally used as the antagonist in modern and post modern films such as Robocop, Aliens, and The Hudsucker Proxy.
The para-military force is another source of antagonism against the Na’vi. Even though it might evoke images of Blackwater to some, I think they served a different plot device. The mercs have an arsenal of flying weapon platforms, mechs and machine guns. The Na’vi have bow and arrows. There is little doubt that if Jake fails in his mission, the Na’vi will be wiped out.
If you go looking for hidden messages, you will find them, whether they were intentional or not.
Did I like the Film?
Overall, I enjoyed the film. I thought that the Na’vi were incredibly cool. Neytiri, the Chief’s daughter, is a fiercely strong female character that Cameron is so fond of (Ripley, Sarah Conner).
The blend of live and animated characters did not work against the film like I thought it would. Even with a familiar plot, Avatar struck an emotional chord and was fun to run with. Unlike Lucas or Spielberg, James Cameron has maintained his distinctive visual style that we first glimpsed in the original Terminator film. I always enjoy Cameron’s vision of technology – it always looks plausible.
And for that, I liked Avatar.
Sherlock Holmes
The spirit of Sherlock Holmes and his loyal assistant and chronicler Dr. Watson (played by Robert Downey, Jr., and Jude Law, respectively) is alive and well in this breathless reinvention of the Holmes genre, although in the details these characters are more Ritchie than Doyle.
No matter. The convoluted plot involving a strange cult bent on wielding great power in England (which in my mind borrows heavily from Mark Frost’s intriguing novel “The List of Seven”) manages to sustain itself only by the sheer power of Downey’s performance as the illustrious detective. It's absurd, confusing and over-blown, but Downey manages to infuse a degree of style and modern sophistication into it.
This version of Holmes is not for the purist. If you want Doyle’s work and character incarnate seek out the phenomenal BBC series starring Jeremy Brett. There’s no better interpretation of Holmes’ character than Brett’s. But as holiday flicks are concerned, Sherlock Holmes is as entertaining and fun as anything at the multiplex right now.
Where is Chuck's Review of Avatar?
I was hoping Chuck would post his
Avatar review by now, but in its absence, I'll plow ahead.
After more than 10 years, James Cameron (
The Terminator, Titanic) returns to the director’s chair in this visual feast of a film that combines live action with CGI so seamlessly that it lives up to the techno-hype. And there has been quite a bit of hype, indeed.
The story is simple: mankind goes to far off planet to rob it of its precious natural resources. Primitive alien people stand in the way. Mankind must wipe out primitive people. Good man comes to the rescue and saves the day.
Heavy-handed? Maybe. Culturally and environmentally relevant? Sure. Where this film succeeds visually, it lacks in character and in its very simple and uninspired storytelling. And aside from Sigorney Weaver,
Avatar sports a cast that is merely adequate. Still, in 3D, Avatar is not something to be missed. See it.
A Cast Reunion
Recently there was a cast reunion worth mentioning.
No, I am not writing about the Seinfeld reunion that is the subject of this season's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on HBO.
Think more David O. Selzenick and less Larry David.
To honor the 70th anniversary of Gone With the Wind, surviving cast members gathered at a tribute event outside Atlanta recently. With Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh being off-planet, the cast reunion comprised actors who played children and babies and Beau Wilkes at various childhood ages in the classic 1939 film.
I don't suppose there was much reminiscing going on at this reunion. But for those surviving performers in attendance , it must be marvelous to know that each was a part of such a remarkable feat of cinematic grandeur the likes of which are long gone in American motion pictures.
I think I'll add Gone With the Wind to my Netflix queue. It's been a while for me, too.
Oh, and George is divorced and is trying to get back with this ex-wife, in case you were wondering.
[*REC]
To follow up on Jay’s post, I have two films that follow the vein of The Blair Witch Project, but, does it right.
The films are Quarantine and [*REC], but we only need to talk about the later as the former is an American remake of the later Spanish Film.
Both are excellent, but, I have to admit to liking [*REC] better.
Both stories follow a female reporter who host the show “While you were sleeping” and follows a group of fire fighters who are called to a tenement building to help with an old lady who has fallen.
That’s when the film goes to hell. Literally.
What makes both films great is that it does not start as a horror film. It lulls you into a false sense of security. The second thing is that the actors in the film feel like normal people who have gotten stuck inside the building.
I prefer [*REC] because the main character is absolutely convincing and ending is…well…creepy. It has more in common with Aliens than Blair Witch, and makes for a pretty scary Halloween movie.
Is it Real, or is it Crap?
Two films have been released this autumn that fall in the vein of The Blair Witch Project: feature motion pictures produced from purported actual archival video capturing elements of the unexplained.
The newly released The Fourth Kind, starring Milla Jovovich, is one of those “let’s pretend this is real using actual video footage” movies, like Paranormal Activity, except here the filmmakers augment the archival “footage” with “dramatic reenactments.” The premise involves a close encounter of the fourth kind, abduction, and the aliens here are not the happy ET’s of Spielberg’s movies. These are bad beings with a grudge.
The set up is intriguing: a psychologist in Nome, Alaska (Jovovich), has patients who seem to all have abduction accounts when placed under hypnosis. And so, too, as it turns out, does our heroine. But the result is uneven, and the climax never really wraps anything up, except to suggest that these bizarre nocturnal owl sightings are really alien abductions, which the audience knows from the get-go. So going in, the audience already knows “the big secret,” so the filmmakers have the responsibility not only to tell a compelling story, but to bring us to a climax that pays off somehow. They fail at both.
The flip side of the coin is Paranormal Activity, which emerged on the festival circuit two years ago but received a wide U.S. release in October. Its premise is very simple and effective: a young couple experience unusual noises and happenings in their San Diego home, and set up a video camera in order to not only record their every waking (and sleeping) move, but to hopefully capture whatever it is that may be haunting them. The film that audiences see is supposedly culled from video tapes released by the San Diego police department.
Director Oren Peli shot this film, which has grossed more than $80 million thus far, at home, in seven days, for $15,000, and delivers a tense and spooky film wherein what the audience doesn’t see is often scarier than what it does. It’s been a while since off-camera audio and mere sound effects have provided such a powerful emotional impact on audiences. And a few of the sequences, shot during the night, in time lapse, are rough and grainy and as spooky as anything I've seen in a movie in a long time. Shot simply in a cinema verite style, this film succeeds where The Fourth Kind comes across as merely a bad two hours of “UFO Stories” on the History Channel.
Labels: Paranormal Activity, The Fourth Kind
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
Cirque du Freak is something for teens, a modern Fright Night, as far as I’m concerned, and it’s a good, clean vampire fun. Two best friends become vampires after visiting a peculiar little freak show run by Mr. Tall (Ken Watanabe) and come down on opposite sides of a vampire conflict: one sides with the good vampires (they do not kill humans) and the other sides with the evil vampires who kill humans and want a war with the good vampires.
Silly, of course, but this kind of goofy cinematic fun is sometimes what movies are all about. Director Paul Weitz (In Good Company, About a Boy) keeps the action moving in this simple but entertaining good versus evil story. The decent performances by John C. Reilly, Selma Hayek and a terrific turn by Willem Dafoe as one of the "good" vampires provide the flick with a little street cred, as does a screenplay co-written by one of my favorite screen scribes Brian Helgeland (Payback, Mystic River, L.A. Confiedential).
Bright Star
Directed by Jane Campion, “Bright Star” is not only a poem by John Keats but the person for whom the poem was written, a young Englishwomen by the name of Fanny Brawne, who falls in love with the young Keats despite the fact that the struggling poet has no income to support a wife. Their romance is not an easy one, lacking the approval of both Keats’ best friend and Fanny’s traditional family, and the three year romance is ultimately cut short by Keats’ tragic death at age 25, a failed poet, broke and alone in Italy recovering from an illness. A great romance flick for those who love poets and poetry.
