AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER: 4 STARS
āAvatar: The Way of Waterā harkens back to a time when Hollywood bigshots thought, āIf a picture is worth a thousand words, a 3D picture is worth a million words.ā The original film, 2009ās āAvatarā was director James Cameronās grand experiment in the audienceās tolerance for 2 hours 42 minutes of images popping off the screen.
Thirteen years ago, the million words theory worked. āAvatarā was a massive hit, grossing almost 3 billion dollars worldwide, as rumors of a series of sequels hung in the air. Delay after delay kept the blue people off screens for so long, four presidents came and went while Cameron tinkered with the story and the technology to bring his vision to life.
The tinkering is finally over. Cameron returns to theatres with the first of four planned sequels, āAvatar: The Way of Water,ā an epic 3D sequel that mixes astonishing visuals with eye-rolling teenagers, a character with the b-movie name Z-Dog and a 3 hour and 12-minute tale of colonialism.
Set on Pandora, an Earth-like habitable extrasolar moon from the Alpha Centauri System populated by the Naāvi, the nine to 10 feet tall Indigenous peoples, the movie picks up the action more than a decade after the events of the first film. Former Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who left his human body behind to permanently become Na'vi, lives on the peaceful planet with wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and children.
Their idyll is interrupted with the return of the Sky People, humans who want toāpacify the hostilesā and takeover Pandora.
āEarth is dying,ā says General Frances Ardmore (Edie Falco). āPandora is the new frontier.ā
Despite having been killed off in the original, the Pandora-bound team is led by the ruthless Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a genetically engineered ārecombinantā or avatar version of the late Marine, implanted with his mind and emotions. āWe have been brought back in the form of our enemy,ā he says of he and his team. He plans on taking Pandora at any cost, and getting revenge on Sully, who he sees as a traitor.
Forced into hiding with Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), Ronal (Kate Winslet) and the reef people clan of Metkayina, Sully and his family learn the way of waterā"no beginning and no endāāand fight to defend their world.
So, the big question is: Was āAvatar: The Way of Waterā worth the wait?
As a technical achievement, yes, unquestionably. The visuals are stunning, particularly in the underwater scenes. Cameronās camera has a nimbleness often missing in 3D films, which often feel locked-down. His fluid camera roams, on land and sea, capturing some of the most eye-popping, breathtaking scenes of this, or any other, season. Each and every frame is carefully considered, and most could be cut out, framed and hung on the wall to great effect.
The visuals facilitate Cameronās world building, providing tantalizing views of the forest land of Pandora and the wet ān wild world of Metkayina, complete with giant whale-like creatures that could have sprung from the imagination of Ray Harryhausen, and lush, colorful flora and fauna.
It does not look like any other 3D filmāeven the original āAvatarāāand will engage the eye and stimulate the brain.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the story, which is as simple as the images are complex. Essentially, Cameron continues the colonialization themes of the first film, while adding in mysticism, traditional medicine, poachers and even a nod to Jonah and the Whale.
Most of all, it is a story of family, of parents and children. Apparently, Pandorian kids behave sort of like Earth teens, eye rolls, attitude and all. The family relationships add an intimate element to the epic story, but the visuals often get in the way of the storytelling.
Long action sequences, like a spectacular sea creature attack, take away from the movieās main thrust, pushing the running time upwards, but not advancing the story. Perhaps they are scheduled in to accommodate bathroom breaks. Whatever the reason, they showcase Cameronās mastery of the form but often feel spectacular simply for the sake of spectacle.
Loud and proud, āAvatar: The Way of Waterā can be, by times, overwhelming, but itās also the kind of grand scale movie that demands to be seen on the biggest, most immersive screen possible. Cameron shoots for the moon, but goes even further, to a place called Pandora.
BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS: 2 ½ STARS
āBardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,ā the new Netflix film from Alejandro González Iñárritu, Oscar winning director of āThe Revenantā and āBirdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), is for people who didnāt think Bob Fosseās āAll That Jazzā was self-indulgent enough.
A surreal treatise on the search for purpose in life, āBardoāāa Buddhist name for the transitional state between death and rebirthāis cut loose of reality, existing in a world where a newborn baby can whisper a request to stay in his motherās womb because the world is too messed up.
Living in this whimsical world is Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a journalist-turned-documentary-filmmaker just days away from becoming the first Mexican to be awarded a prestigious American journalism accolade. Instead of elation, Silverio develops a bad case of imposterās syndrome. He anxiously questions everything, from his professional success and Mexican identity, to family trauma and the biggest question of all, what, exactly are we doing here? āSuccess,ā he says, āhas been my biggest failure.ā
He spends the movie gazing into what seems to be a never-ending navel, one filled with existential crisis and vivid fever dreams.
There are undeniably unforgettable images contained in Iñárrituās ethereal, dreamlike film. A conversation with conquistador Hernán Cortés, at the top of a pyramid of corpses will sear itself into your corneas and the opening shot, of Silverioās shadow leapfrogging through a desert, is beautiful and haunting. But as memorable as these sequences are, they feel as if Iñárritu is flexing a muscle, pumping the movie up with beefy visuals that exist simply for the sake of filling the screen, not filling out the storytelling.
The hallucinatory visuals often overwhelm the points Iñárritu attempts to elucidate. He is a master of cinematographic language, but the mix and match of Silverioās rambling search for meaning with these flamboyant images, adds up to a showy, self-referential film, one that is too much enamored with itself.
Amusingly, Iñárritu seems to understand this. In one long scene a former friend turned television provocateur taunts Silverio, accusing him of being shallow and pretentious. Itās a meta moment, one in which the filmās characters accurately sum up the action happening around them onscreen. It is the most self-aware moment in āBardo,ā a movie that attempts to unearth lifeās deeper meaning, but often is too obtuse to move the heart or the spirit.
THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER: 3 ½ STARS
āThe Eternal Daughter,ā now playing in theatres, is a gothic ghost story set at a hotel, but donāt check in expecting thrills and chills. This is psychological drama that plays upon the power of memories to create a sense of unease.
Written and directed by Joanna Hogg, the film stars Tilda Swinton in a dual role as screenwriter Julie Hart and her elderly mother Rosalind. Julie is in the early stages of writing a film about her relationship with her mother and has planned a stay at a stately, but remote hotel that once belonged to Rosalindās aunt, in Wales. In the quiet of the Welsh countryside Julie hopes to mine her motherās memories for details to enrich her screenplay.
When she was evacuated from London during the Blitz, Rosalind lived at the hotel, then a grand country mansion. Julie questions her about that time, āWere you aware of the war going on?ā but Rosalind is reticent to dredge up some of the old memories. She remembers the happy times, but grows heartfelt when evoking the death of her brother, lost in the war during battle over the English Channel.
āYou always said you had such happy memories here,ā says Julie. āOh mom, Iām so sorry. I feel so bad for bringing you here.ā
āI did have happy memories here,ā Rosalind replies, ābut I also had other memories here and theyāre all still alive.ā
Despite her motherās attempts to placate her, Julie is distraught at the pain she has caused by bringing Rosalind back to her childhood home. āItās really difficult for me to think of her as being sad,ā Julie says.
There is a fuzzy line between fantasy and reality in āThe Eternal Daughter.ā The old hotel, run by a tetchy front desk clerk (Carly-Sophia Davies), whose passive-aggression brings some humor to the staid situation, creaks in the night and shadows loom in the corners. It is the perfect Gothic breeding ground for Julieās growing dread and paranoia. Director Hogg takes her time revealing the filmās direction, and whether or not characters, like the groundskeeper Bill (Joseph Mydell) are real or a figment of Julieās imagination.
Itās not about thrills, itās about mood. As the two women attempt to connect, to find a way through the memories to a real, tangible place, Hogg creates melodramatic psychological miasma that questions the very proceedings on the screen. There are no easy answers, as Swinton, masterfully playing both mother and daughter, explores the connection between reality, fantasy and memory, but the questions about identity left by the story will linger.
IāM TOTALLY FINE: 3 STARS
Like āStarman,ā the 1984 Jeff Bridges movie about an alien who returns to Earth in the form of a heartbroken widowās late husband, a new film is an out-of-this-world exploration of grief.
In āIām Totally Fine,ā a new dark comedy now on VOD, Jillian Bell plays Vanessa, a young woman struggling to clear her head after the sudden death of her best friend and business partner Jennifer (Natalie Morales).
Alone at the rental home, where she was planning a party to celebrate the success of their shared soft drink company, she is startled when someoneāor somethingāwho looks exactly like her late friend turns up in the kitchen. The strange situation becomes even stranger when new Jennifer (Morales) says she is an extraterrestrial, loaded with all of Jennifer memories, sent to Earth for forty-eight hours to study civilization. āJennifer remains deceased,ā says the species observation officer, āI am simply an extraterrestrial who has taken her form.ā
Over the next two days, reluctantly at first, Vanessa undergoes tests and begins to understand the meaning of Alfred Lord Tennysonās words, "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
āIām Totally Fineā is an undeniably weird odd-couple movie about the power of connection and the importance of letting go.
Bell is understated as she cycles through Vanessaās stages of grief. āIt might be fun to see how unstable I can get,ā she says. Her world is inside out, but as alien Jennifer looks on, making notesā"Human has turned anger on herself.āāthat actually help Vanessa punch a hole into the melancholy that hangs over her like a veil.
The far showier role belongs to Morales. As a monotone alien who is often bewildered by humanity, her unabashedly odd performance becomes endearing as she becomes the catapult for Vanessaās catharsis. Itās a trick to find the balance between quirky and compassion, and Morales nails it.
Despite its odd story, āIām Totally Fineā doesnāt go anywhere you donāt see coming, but the performances bring some real humanity to the alien premise.
