Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Yes, it’s been thirteen years since Avatar, and I can say that not a day has gone by when I’ve wanted more from the franchise. I’ve strolled around the theme park in Orlando, and I’ve listened to the soundtrack off and on, and I even attended the IMAX rerelease three months ago once it seemed that James Cameron was finally going to deliver on his decade-plus of promises to revisit the world of Pandora. I did all these things out of no particular affection for the movie, its creators, or even its specific world; any attachment I have to Avatar is purely on the level of an appreciation for spectacle. Avatar: The Way of Water is no better than its predecessor, but it is certainly more, and your take on the movie will probably tell us more about you than it will about the film itself. It is, in a sense, a pure cinematic Rorschach test.

It’s been several years since Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) “went native” and abandoned his human body for a Na’vi avatar; he’s started a family with Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and made a home in the forests of Pandora. But when the “sky people” return to the alien world, in search of profit and revenge, they’re accompanied by the impossibly-resurrected Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who wants Sully’s blood for himself. To protect their Omatikaya tribe, Sully and his family flee their home and take refuge with the water-dwelling Metkayina Clan.

 

Let’s begin right off the bat with an admission that The Way of Water is loaded with some Grade-A nonsense, bordering on sheer balderdash. Even setting aside the bonkers reinclusion of Stephen Lang’s snarly villain, this is a three-hour movie where Sigourney Weaver also returns, but in the body of a blue teenager; where holding your breath is a pivotal plot point; and where crucial exposition is delivered by an immense telepathic whale. If you made it through that sentence without rolling your eyes, this might be the movie for you, but if not, your patience for sci-fi claptrap may wear thin long before the film’s three hours elapse. 

 

And it is long, make no mistake about it. It’s three hours long, and it does feel it; though I’m not sure exactly what I would cut (because James Cameron seems never to have met a Chekhov’s gun he didn’t fire), the last twenty minutes feel like extended set-up for a third film. While things are always happening on screen, there’s a point about two hours in, just before the third act and all its 3D action begin, when one’s hindquarters may be falling asleep. I was never entirely bored, but I was growing restless. Put another way, The Way of Water never quite earns its runtime the way Avengers: Endgame did – which may say more about me than about either movie. 

 

Part of the challenge is that The Way of Water is paper-thin. Its plotting is entirely unsubtle, its characterization never transcends the immediate needs of the plot, and the dialogue is in places ear-scrapingly direct. (“Who’s got the harpoon now?” one character sarcastically asks another after a third quite literally takes possession of a harpoon.) As far as the story goes, Cameron has never really scored points for originality. Indeed, after Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, he’s not even the first movie this winter about a lost civilization of underwater blue people at war with a technologically-advanced military. Like the first one, this Avatar is equal parts Pocahontas and Dances With Wolves, Ferngully and Smurfs in space, though The Way of Water is generously leavened with Free Willy and even a helping of Moby-Dick. We’ve seen all of this before, and most of it in the last Avatar film.

 

Yet I will give Cameron points for the film paying out like a slot machine in its third act. Nearly everything that’s been set up in the first two acts comes to bear in the grand finale, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I too got swept along with the rest of my theater when the aforementioned giant whale returned to the plot and did its Tulkun thing all over the bad guys. Other plot threads resurface in surprising ways, including one especially gratifying amputation, and you do end up with a very satisfying conclusion – if you have the patience and the tolerance to get there.

 

I can grumble about the fact that the acting is a little wooden (especially and egregiously, Edie Falco, who seems to be reading her lines cold off a cue card) or that the storytelling is nothing new, but I don’t think anyone comes to a James Cameron film because he’s some sort of poet laureate. Rather, he’s an expert ringmaster in the circus of spectacle; we come to his movies to be entertained, to be dazzled by special effects and ultra-widescreen action. Things blow up in three pristine dimensions, and water has never looked this crystalline. You have to wade through storytelling that is less than inspired to get there, but the Cameron vibe has always been, “Trust me, this will be worth it.” No one came to Titanic for the greatest love story ever; we came to watch a big ship sink. Likewise, no one comes to The Way of Water because we can’t get enough of those Na’vi; we come to see motion-capture evolve, to see a world unlike ours, and if it feels a little like a nature documentary, so be it – The Way of Water has a mellow hang-out aura that verges on overstaying its welcome before hitting a rousing third act. 

 

In terms of its narrative, The Way of Water is only as effective as it needs to be to serve that third act, and on an emotional level I’m not sure that we grow attached enough to the characters to feel the climax. But on the level of visual spectacle, there’s really nothing quite like an Avatar movie, and your ability to derive maximum enjoyment from the film really depends on how much you’re willing and able to silence your critic’s brain and just ride the waves. That’s, after all, the true way of water – go with the flow.

 

Avatar: The Way of Water is rated PG-13 for “sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity, and some strong language.” Directed by James Cameron. Written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, and Shane Salerno. Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, and Kate Winslet. 

Monday at the Movies - September 15, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Continuing our string of bizarre coincidences, tomorrow is screenwriter Justin Haythe’s birthday, he of the largely ill-conceived Lone Ranger reboot.

Revolutionary Road (2008) – If you want to remember the postwar era fondly, the door to Turner Classic Movies is that way.  Director Sam Mendes helms this adaptation of the eponymous novel by Richard Yates, and you’ll find it astounding to believe this is the same director behind both Skyfall and American Beauty.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play Frank and April Wheeler, a couple for whom the sheen of marital bliss is quickly cracking; the two deliver reliably solid work, and the tension between the two is divinely palpable.  As unfaltering as these two performances are, they’re also relentlessly depressing.  They’re fantastic performers, and we enjoy them on-screen for it, but good Lord – it’s very trying to watch two of your most beloved thespians berate each other for two hours in a self-destructive, mutually abusive marriage.  The goal here is a warts-and-all exposé on the darker side of the late-40s American optimism, with a heavy dose of Peyton Place thrown in for those who still held the suburbs as idyllic.  On that count, Revolutionary Road is a bleak success, but feel good it ain’t.  To lighten the mood, though, Michael Shannon wanders into the frame every so often, and – as is usually the case with him – it’s as though he’s in an entirely different movie, one I can’t say I wouldn’t rather have watched.  His supporting role as the son of the Wheelers’ realtor neighbor (Kathy Bates) comes with equal parts mental derangement and frightening outburst, a fine and effective complement to the repressed Frank and April.  The real treat is in watching him act, with an occasional tic or bizarre vocal inflection making his the only real fun performance to be had in a film that is creatively successful but otherwise oppressing to watch.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - November 4, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, the play’s the thing!

Carnage (2011) – I was actually quite proud of myself on this one because I didn’t let Roman Polanski’s repugnant past impede my enjoyment of Carnage, an adaptation of the Yasmina Reza play.  Instead, I found myself won over by four immensely compelling performances.  Jodie Foster & John C. Reilly play the parents of a boy struck by the son of another couple, Kate Winslet & Christoph Waltz.  12 Angry Men fans will likely relish the insular nature of the film, whose action takes place solely within one apartment and its connecting hallway.  This cinematic claustrophobia permits the performances to, pardon the pun, take center stage.  Quickly we see that the ceremony on which the couples stand is a precarious peace predicated on the perpetuation of pretty faces and posturing; Foster’s performance is a bold one as she breaks down and exposes the degree to which her character is entirely full of herself by blubbering through self-satisfied liberal platitudes, while Reilly reveals the polar opposite, a suppressed John Wayne sublimated by his wife’s feelgoodery.  Across the table, Winslet and Waltz are pitch-perfect as self-righteous and condescending spouses who can barely say two words to each other without making a phone call or, quite literally, throwing up.  Waltz is the only one who seems to resist epiphany here, his eye rolls and workaholic behavior an interesting type apart from his talky Tarantino turns.  It’s not that Foster and Reilly are bad, but Winslet and Waltz are in a stratosphere all their own, though they know how to let the other members of the ensemble take the screen back when need be.  An incisive look at how the hot-button issue of bullying may be a load of grandstanding and self-righteousness, Carnage is smart and delightful, four tour-de-force performances in a riveting bundle.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  We’ll see you here next week, and don’t forget that this Thursday is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month...!

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

I finally sat down to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for three reasons: I'd run out of "must-see" movies, I personally know people who love this movie, and it's landing at the top of many "Best of 2000-2009" lists. And after seeing the movie, I can't fathom why people are saying this is the best film of the last decade.

I'm not being sarcastic. I'm not being glib. I'm not deliberately trying to be antagonistic by penning a negative review of one of the most critically-acclaimed movies of my lifetime. I wanted to like Eternal Sunshine. I really did, and I tried my darndest to do so. But in the final analysis, I switched off my television, took the DVD out of the player, and shrugged, "Meh."

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind represents the latest in an unintentional series of "boy-meets-girl" movies here at The Cinema King. Here, the boy is Joel (Jim Carrey), and the girl is Clementine (Kate Winslet with a "you won't believe she's British" voice). Following a nasty break-up, the two separately elect to undergo a memory erasure procedure pioneered by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (an underused Tom Wilkinson). Though Clementine accepts the ignorance-is-bliss philosophy offered by Mierzwiak and his team (which includes Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst, and Elijah Wood), Joel begins to regret his decision midway through the procedure as he struggles to remember his time, however bitter, with Clementine.

Aside from the imaginative premise of memory erasure and the inventive ways that director Michel Gondry devises to depict the practice, the film is disappointingly formulaic but without any effort put into making the formula believable. I didn't detect very much chemistry between Joel and Clementine; indeed, it seems as though all they do is goof around before making each other miserable. Consequently, the film's basic throughline - Joel's quest not to forget Clementine - is shallow and uninspiring. Simply put, the only reason to root for these characters is because we're told to. Clementine is mildly endearing - thank the always-divine Winslet for that - though she barely develops beyond the "manic pixie dream girl" trope. Carrey develops even less; he mopes lethargically through the movie without the convincing ennui that JGL employed in (500) Days of Summer. The supporting cast is decent, though they float through the movie with little to do beyond advance the plot; Wood's character shows creepy promise, but it's as though Kaufman & Co. didn't quite know what to do with him. Disappointment ensues.

The other major grievance I have against Eternal Sunshine is that it's brutally slow-paced, and when all your characters are extremely depressed without providing any reason for us to sympathize with them this can be a painful experience. Combine this with the predictability quotient exhibited by this movie, and the only reason I finished the movie was because I'm just that kind of a guy.

But I guess I can see why so many people love this movie. It's innocuous, and it's uncomplicated; it's got neat visual effects, a narrative spine (albeit a misued one), and a hopeful ending that affirms an optimism in the human condition. But for a #1 movie of the last ten years, I need a little more than marshmallow fluff. I need something incisive and at least slightly subversive, a movie that either tells me something I didn't know or tells me something that feels like the truth - not a Hollywood version of the truth. (An uncompromised ending apparently suggested that patients of the memory-loss program were bound to repeat their mistakes and need the procedure several times; this might have been more intriguing and would have at least made the film feel inventive and not just lethargically and slavishly optimistic.) So for some this may be a divine movie, but for me it's just plain disappointing. But that's the point of reviews; I'm leaning toward The Departed being the best movie of the last ten years, but maybe Eternal Sunshine fans find it deplorable. Fine.

Let me conclude by clarifying that I don't think that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a terrible movie. It's not; it's certainly no Next. It may not be great, but moreover it's just not "to my liking," nor can I explain why so many people are saying it was the best film of the last ten years. Now I almost have to write my own list.
The MPAA rated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind R "for language, some drug and sexual content." F-bombs get dropped, there's some mild nuzzling/cuddling, all the girls end up in their underwear at some point in the movie, and a few characters smoke mariijuana. Language aside, this probably could have been a hard PG-13 if the filmmakers had aimed for it.