I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the eye-popping “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the self-reflective “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” the dark comedy “I’m Totally Fine” and the eerie Tilda Swinton movie “The Eternal Daughter.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to unload the dishwasher! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the eye-popping “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the self-reflective “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” and the dark comedy “I’m Totally Fine.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Avatar: The Way of Water” harkens back to a time when Hollywood bigshots thought, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a 3D picture is worth a million words.” The original film, 2009’s “Avatar” was director James Cameron’s grand experiment in the audience’s tolerance for 2 hours 42 minutes of images popping off the screen.
Thirteen years ago, the million words theory worked. “Avatar” 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, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” 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 Na’vi, the 9 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 to“pacify the hostiles” and takeover Pandora.
“Earth is dying,” says General Frances Ardmore (Edie Falco). “Pandora is the new frontier.”
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 “recombinant” or avatar version of the late Marine, implanted with his mind and emotions. “We have been brought back in the form of our enemy,” 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 water—”no beginning and no end”—and fight to defend their world.
So, the big question is: Was “Avatar: The Way of Water” worth the wait?
As a technical achievement, yes, unquestionably. The visuals are stunning, particularly in the underwater scenes. Cameron’s 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 Cameron’s world building, providing tantalizing views of the forest land of Pandora and the wet ‘n 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 film—even the original “Avatar”—and 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 movie’s 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 Cameron’s mastery of the form but often feel spectacular simply for the sake of spectacle.
Loud and proud, “Avatar: The Way of Water” can be, by times, overwhelming, but it’s 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.
My “Avatar” review from December 2009. The film is being re-released into theatres this weekend in advance of the release of the sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which will be in theatres on December 16, 2022.
*****
In the gap between James “King of the World” Cameron’s last theatrical feature, “Titanic,” and his new film, “Avatar” (in theatres this weekend) Clint Eastwood directed 11 movies, Michael Bay made 6 and even Uwe Boll, a director so reviled there is an on–line petition to prevent him from making any more films, has made fifteen in the time it took Cameron to make just one, but it’s quite a movie.
“Avatar,” based on an original idea by Cameron, is set in the 22nd century on a small planet called Pandora. Under the lush terra firma is a valuable mineral much sought after by the Avatar program—a collaboration between industry and military. Since the climate and atmosphere aren’t hospitable to humans a substitute for homosapien invaders is required. That would be living, breathing avatars of the Pandorian natives, controlled by a human “driver” through a high tech link-up that connects the driver’s mind to their Avatar body. The ten feet tall, blue skinned natives, called the Na’vi— although the humans dismissively call them “blue monkeys”—are deeply connected to their planet, sharing a connection with the land and all its creatures that defies human comprehension. Only one man comes close to understanding the Na’vi. He’s Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) a former marine who lost the use of his legs in combat. Brought on board the Avatar program he is initially used as a mole to infiltrate a Na’vi community to glean information that will make the harvesting of minerals easier, but what begins as simply completing his mission and using his legs again through the avatar soon becomes something else. He learns to love not only the Na’vi people, but one Na’vi in particular, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana).
First let’s dispel some myths. You don’t need to take Gravol with you to the movie theatre. 1.) There were rumors on the net that “Avatar’s” mix of hand held camera and 3-D was literally stomach turning. Not true. 2.) It’s not “Dances with Wolves in Space” or “Fergully” with aliens. 3.) Sight unseen people were calling it Cameron’s Folly, a three hour waste of film and money (a reported $300 million). Not true. 4.) “The Na’vi are the new Jar Jar Binks,” bloggers screamed! Also not true.
With “Avatar” Cameron has made a sprawling epic that lives up to the hype. It is something completely new, a movie that is not a sequel, a remake or based on an existing novel; a film that sprung from Cameron’s imagination and exists on its own plane. Brett Ratner, Michael Bay and all other Hollywood hacks, hang your heads in shame.
Cameron starts from scratch creating a whole new world with language, customs, religion and crazy creatures but never forgets that this is an action movie and not an anthological study. To that he adds allusions to the Iraq war, shock and awe policies and the Native American genocide all bundled up in one giant sci fi romance action flick.
It’s not all perfect, the dialogue is frequently 1980’s-action-movie lame, filled with clichés; there are logic lapses and Saldana’s character shifts from Ripley (remember “Alien”?) to damsel in distress in the blink of an eye, but the film’s achievements outweigh any of these misgivings.
Despite what the early word on the movie may have been Cameron—who at this rate won’t make another film until 2221—makes the audience feel compassion for obviously computer enhanced giant blue creatures, keep our interest for almost three hours and presents a dazzling climax that’ll leave you slack jawed.
THE BAD (in alphabetical order)
CHIPs: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that writer-director-star Dax Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation from the classic TV show but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.
The Circle: While it is a pleasure to see Bill Paxton in his last big screen performance, “The Circle” often feels like an Exposition-A-Thon, a message in search of a story.
The Fate of the Furious: Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly. “The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mash-up of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Vin Diesel and Company that more is not always more.
Fifty Shades Darker: Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword? “Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.
The Mountain Between Us: Mountain survival movies usually end up with someone eating someone else to stay alive. “The Mountain Between Us” features the usual mountain survival tropes—there’s a plane crash, a showdown with a cougar and broken bones—but luckily for fans of stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet cannibalism is not on the menu. Days pass and then weeks pass and soon they begin their trek to safety. “Where are we going?” she asks. “We’re alive,” he says. “That’s where were going.” There will be no spoilers here but I will say the crash and story of survival changes them in ways that couldn’t imagine… but ways the audience will see coming 100 miles away. It’s all a bit silly—three weeks in and unwashed they still are a fetching couple—but at least there’s no cannibalism and no, they don’t eat the dog.
The Mummy: As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.
The Shack: Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.
The Snowman: We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better. Mix a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Movies like the high gloss crime thriller “La Femme Nikita,” the assassin mentor flick “Léon: The Professional” and outré sci fi opera “The Fifth Element” have come to define director Luc Besson’s outrageous style. Kinetic blasts of energy, his films are turbo charged fantasies that make eyeballs dance even if they don’t always engage the brain. His latest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” not only has one of the longest titles of the year but is also one of the most over-the-top, retina-frying movies of the year. Your eyes will beg for mercy.
Wonder Wheel: At the beginning of the film Mickey (Justin Timberlake) warns us that what we are about to see will be filtered through his playwright’s point of view. Keeping that promise, writer, director Woody Allen uses every amount of artifice at his disposal—including cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s admittedly sumptuous photography—to create a film that is not only unreal but also unpleasant. “Oh God,” Ginny (Kate Winslet) cries out at one point. “Spare me the bad drama.” Amen to that.
THE UGLY
Song to Song: I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits. I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true. In “Song to Song” there’s a quick shot of a tattoo that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies. I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
EXTRA! EXTRRA! MOST COUNFOUNDING
mother!: Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Aronofsky’s story of uninvited guests disrupting the serene lives of a poet and his wife refuses to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?
Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the stranger’s sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.
“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Logan,” the latest (and greatest) Wolverine flick, the time travel teen angst movie “Before I Fall,” the animated “Ballerina,” the quirky “Table 19” with Anna Kendrick and the controversial Christian movie “The Shack.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies, “Logan,” the latest (and greatest) Wolverine flick, the time travel teen angst movie “Before I Fall” and the controversial Christian movie “The Shack.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“The Shack” is Canadian author William Paul Young’s look at healing from a Christian point of view. Praised and condemned equally upon its 2007 release, it became a bestseller which begat a film of the same name starring Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer. Some loved the book’s depiction of how God works in our lives; others called it heresy. The movie is likely to ignite similar theological conversations but my complaints are of a more cinematically secular nature.
Worthington is Mack Phillips, God-fearing family man. Loving husband to Nan (Radha Mitchell) and dad to Kate (Megan Charpentier), Josh (Gage Munroe) and the precocious Missy (Amelie Eve); he goes to church, works hard and spends as much time with his family as possible. A weekend trip with the kids is a wholesome good time—there are endless choruses of the campfire classic “I Met a Bear” and loads of roasted marshmallows—until little Missy goes missing, presumed of abducted by a fugitive from justice. When her little red dress is found marinating in a puddle of blood in a shack in the woods all hope is lost. Missy is gone and she won’t be back.
Her disappearance changes everything. Mack has a crisis of faith and feelings of guilt and remorse haunt the family. When Mack finds a note in his mailbox reading, “Meet me at the shack,” he becomes upset and confused. There were no footprints in the snow to and from the box, and, more mysteriously, it was signed “Papa,” Missy’s nickname for God.
Borrowing his best friend’s (Tim McGraw) four wheel drive Mack heads for the shack. “I gotta do something,” he grunts, “and this is all I got.” There he finds the rundown shack where his daughter’s dress was found, a desolate building almost buried in snow but just around the corner is something else, something otherworldly. Steps away is an Eden, a sunny, warm and welcoming place with a shack. Inside the humble home are Jesus and Sarayu (Aviv Alush, Sumire Matsubara), led by a woman named Papa (Octavia Spencer). Is it a dream? Has he died and gone to heaven? “Why did you bring me back here?” he asks. “Because here’s where you got stuck,” replies Papa.
Here he begins the most painful journey of his life, the road to forgiveness.
“The Shack” is the very definition of a church basement movie, a film programmed with a very specific audience in mind. Aimed at a Christian audience willing to embrace its message of love and forgiveness while overlooking some of the controversial parts, i.e. the depiction of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is a sermon come to life but with too much off screen narration, really heavy-handed imagery and clunky dialogue like Papa’s declaration that, “God is especially fond of Neil Young.”
“The Shack” is very earnest, a movie that tackles one of humanity’s great questions, “Why does God let bad things happen?” without adding much to the argument. Bad things happen, we’re told, simply because it is God’s will. It is eternal wisdom wrapped in a movie that never met a point it couldn’t belabour or a scene it couldn’t overplay.
Worthington and Spencer are good actors but the precious material sucks any kind of grit out of their performances. We’re left with Worthington’s one-note portrayal of the stages of grief coupled with Spencer’s calm to the point of dull work as the all-knowing and slightly sassy deity.
Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.
Richard and CP24 anchor George Lagogianes have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Doctor Strange,” the fourteenth film in the Marvel Universe, “Trolls,” the return of a 1970s pop culture phenomenon, Andrew Garfield as real-life WWII hero and pacifist Desmond Doss in “Hacksaw Ridge” and the Iggy and the Stooges documentary “Gimme Danger.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
