Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has a new world awaiting him in AVATAR
AVATAR (James Cameron, 2009)
www.avatarmovie.com
Canadian-born director James Cameron (THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS, THE ABYSS, and some movie about a big sinking ship) crafts an expensive, high-tech apology to native people the world over in the futuristic adventure thriller AVATAR. Borrowing elements from such films as THE MATRIX, ALIEN, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Star Wars saga, Disney’s animated POCOHANTAS, REIGN OF FIRE, and many a cowboy-and-Indian tale, Cameron propels audiences into 2154, where a team of scientists join up with military troops on Pandora, home to the invaluable mineral unobtainium as well as a native race known alternately as the na’vi, or the People. In the middle of it all is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a wheelchair-bound former Marine who takes the place of his brilliant brother, who was recently murdered. While head researcher Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) thinks bringing Jake on board is a mistake, Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) sees it as an opportunity to make use of Jake’s expert reconnaissance skills, so Jake takes over what would have been his brother’s avatar – a giant creation modeled after the na’vi that humans can operate from a pod while asleep and that gives Jake the opportunity to walk again through this tall blue being. Quaritch secretly promises Jake that he will get him the costly procedure that will give him back the use of his real legs if he infiltrates the na’vi and sends intel back to the colonel as the military prepares an all-out assault on the People, but when Jake falls for the beautiful Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), he undergoes a change of heart. As with most Cameron films, the visual splendor is thwarted by a tired, clichéd script that devolves into complete silliness in the last half hour, spurred on by James Horner’s treacly score and plenty of poorly delivered lines. But AVATAR is still lots of stupid fun, especially if you see it in 3D.
Writer-director Andrea Arnold follows up her brilliant, harrowing feature debut, 2006’s RED ROAD, with the brilliant, highly perceptive, and emotionally gripping FISH TANK. Katie Jarvis, a seventeen-year-old discovered by Arnold while the girl was arguing with her boyfriend on a train station platform, had never acted before and was not a dancer, but Arnold cast her in the lead role of Mia, a fifteen-year-old troubled kid who dreams of becoming a professional hip-hop dancer as her only way out of her drab life. A loner quick to curse and fight, Mia lives with her mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), who loves to drink and party, and her little sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths making her acting debut as well). When her mother starts dating Connor (Michael Fassbender), Mia soon turns to him for help and advice, but their relationship threatens to grow much too close and far too dangerous. Arnold shot the film in chronological order, giving each actor only parts of the script at a time, so virtually every scene of FISH TANK feels fresh and genuine, with natural, believable actions and reactions. While Wareing and Fassbender (HUNGER and 300) are excellent, the film belongs to the remarkable Jarvis, who will break your heart over and over again.
French auteur André Téchiné (RENDEZ-VOUS, WILD REEDS), who specializes in deeply emotional dramas, follows up the wholly unnecessary AIDS film WITNESSES with the equally unnecessary THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN. Adapted from a play by Jean-Marie Besset based on a real-life scandal, the films stars the charming Emilie Dequenne as Jeanne, a young woman trying to find her place in the world. Flighty and flakey, Jeanne agrees to go on a job interview with a high-powered lawyer, Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), whom her mother, Louise (Catherine Deneuve), used to work for and nearly had an extramarital fling with. But when Jeanne’s burgeoning relationship with a suspicious wrestler named Franck (Nicolas Devauchelle) ends in extreme violence, she acts out in a way that results in a national scandal built on lies. As with WITNESSES, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN has little to say about its subject matter. The characters seem lost, wandering around aimlessly in Téchiné’s misguided story, and Jeanne feels particularly outdated and irrelevant even though she’s the title character. Téchiné, who divides the film into two parts, “Circumstances” and “Consequences,” admits to having significantly changed both the actual events and the play; perhaps he should have left well enough alone.
The Hughes brothers’ postapocalyptic thriller, THE BOOK OF ELI, looks great, and star and producer Denzel Washington is great, but as the story continually teases the audience with a series of more and more ridiculous “revelations,” the film devolves into a jaw-droppingly awful mess. Washington plays the walker, a man who has been journeying west across a desolate land laid low by a war that ended three decades before, leaving death and destruction in its wake. He’s on a mission, carrying with him a treasured book, the last of its kind, and he’s well equipped to protect it with his life — and with an arsenal of supercool weapons that he uses on deranged men roaming around looking for people to rob and women to rape. But soon he finds himself in a no-horse town run by the villainous Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who thinks he can expand his domain if only he could get his grubby hands on a book that he’s been searching for — and that the walker just happens to have and is not about to give up. Things really start falling apart once Solara (Mila Kunis), the daughter of Carnegie’s blind girlfriend (Jennifer Beals), decides to join the walker on the run. THE BOOK OF ELI is a mad mix of THE ROAD WARRIOR, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, YOJIMBO, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, FAHRENHEIT 451, and not at all in a good way. You’re much better off sitting down for a few hours and reading a good book.