AVATAR(2009)
Absolutely one of the best movies ever made!! The 3-D
version was phenomenal, and I can't imagine that the
2-D will lose much in the trasfer over to 2-D. Worth watching
over and over again! A+
From a reviewer at Amazon.com:
After 12 years of thinking about it (and waiting for movie
technology to catch up with his visions), James Cameron
followed up his unsinkable Titanic with Avatar, a sci-fi epic
meant to trump all previous sci-fi epics. Set in the future
on a distant planet, Avatar spins a simple little parable
about greedy colonizers (that would be mankind) messing
up the lush tribal world of Pandora. A paraplegic Marine
named Jake (Sam Worthington) acts through a 9-foot-tall
avatar that allows him to roam the planet and pass as one
of the Na'vi, the blue-skinned, large-eyed native people
who would very much like to live their peaceful lives
without the interference of the visitors. Although he's
supposed to be gathering intel for the badass general
(Stephen Lang) who'd like to lay waste to the planet and
its inhabitants, Jake naturally begins to take a liking to
the Na'vi, especially the feisty Neytiri (Zoë Saldana, whose
entire performance, recorded by Cameron's complicated
motion-capture system, exists as a digitally rendered Na'vi).
The movie uses state-of-the-art 3D technology to plunge
the viewer deep into Cameron's crazy toy box of planetary
ecosystems and high-tech machinery. Maybe it's the fact
that Cameron seems torn between his two loves--awesome
destructive gizmos and flower-power message mongering-
-that makes Avatar's pursuit of its point ultimately uncertain.
That, and the fact that Cameron's dialogue continues to
clunk badly. If you're won over by the movie's trippy new
world, the characters will be forgivable as broad, useful
archetypes rather than standard-issue stereotypes, and
you might be able to overlook the unsurprising central plot.
(The overextended "take that, Michael Bay" final battle
sequences could tax even Cameron enthusiasts, however.)
It doesn't measure up to the hype (what could?) yet Avatar
frequently hits a giddy delirium all its own. The film itself
is our Pandora, a sensation-saturated universe only the
movies could create. --Robert Horton