Avatar

5 of 5

The Plot: The story’s hero is Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. Bitter and disillusioned, he’s still a warrior at heart. All Jake ever wanted was something worth fighting for, and he finds it in the place he least expected: on a distant world. Jake has been recruited to join an expedition to the moon Pandora, which corporate interests are strip-mining for a mineral worth $20 million per kilogram on Earth. To facilitate their work, the humans use a link system that projects a person’s consciousness into a hybrid of humans and Pandora’s indigenous humanoids, the Na’vi. This human-Na’vi hybrid – a fully living, breathing body that resembles the Na’vi but possesses the individual human’s thoughts, feelings and personality – is known as an “avatar.”

In his new avatar form, Jake can once again walk. His mission is to interact with and infiltrate the Na’vi with the hope of enlisting their help – or at least their acquiescence – in mining the ore. A beautiful Na’vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake’s life, albeit reluctantly, because even in his avatar body, Jake represents to her the human encroachment on the Na’vi’s unspoiled world.

As Jake’s relationship with Neytiri deepens, along with his respect for the Na’vi, he faces the ultimate test as he leads an epic conflict that will decide nothing less than the fate of an entire world.

My Review: I remember watching T2 when i was younger and being left in awe when it was said and done. There has been amazing movies since then, but nothing that left me breathless as Avatar did. James Cameron is back in a big way and Avatar is proof of that. From the beginning to end this film is amazing visually and story wise.

This movie pulls you in so deep even from the beginning as the story is rich. Watching Jake go from (as he is called in the beginning of the film) a “baby” to one of the tribe members was great. I love the twist Cameron gave to all of the wildlife on the planet all aquatic based life forms in ways you could never imagine . While you can see the end coming after about half of the movie it doesn’t bring down the film at all.You are pulling for the Na’vi the whole film as Cameron’s hidden message hits your heart hard.

I recommend this film to all who truly love film. You will never forget anything you seen in this movie.

It’s the last month of the last year of the decade. The end is nigh and that means it’s time to take a look back at the best films America has had to offer over the last 10 years:

10. No Country for Old Men – (2007) Perhaps the best film by the acclaimed Coen Brothers, this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel is the tale of a normal man on the run (Josh Brolin) from an inhuman assassin (Javier Bodem) and the sherrif standing between them who’s the last of a dying breed (Tommy Lee Jones). Filled with terrific dialogue, the controversial ending is among the most poigniant Hollywood has ever had to offer. It truly deserved its Oscars, which include Best Picture and Best Director.

9. The Lookout (2007) - Imagine Memento meets Out of Sight and you’ll have a rough idea of what this terrific movie written and directed by Scott Frank is about. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a Chris Pratt, whose brain and self-worth have been severely damaged by a driving accident. Since then, he has fallen under the tutelage of the humble and infinitely likable Lewis (played by Jeff Daniels) and his life has slowly gotten back on track… that is until he’s brought under the seduction of Isla Fisher and made part of a heist that changes everything.

8. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) – Bill Murry should have won an Academy Award for his performance in this movie that is essentially about a man who still lives the life of a child until he’s brought to face a child of his own (Owen Wilson). Filled with all the whit and wonder of every Wes Anderson film with an acoustic David Bowie sountrack (sung in Portuguese by Seu Jorge) to match, this is a movie as hilarious as it is moving.

7. Frank Miller’s Sin City (2005) - There’s been a lot of comic book-inspired movies before and after Sin City, but none have ever been as faithful as the masterpiece brought to life by Robert Rodriquez and Frank Miller, himself. Visually, this movie set the bar on what film is capable of. As a true “comic book movie,” it showed that the stories drawn in the pages can work on screen without the studio’s help in reimagining it.

6. Gangs of New York (2002) – Martin Scorsese really outdid himself when he released this movie. Besides containing fantastic performances from Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo Decaprio (whom he continues a relationship with to this day) and even Cameron Diaz, it visually captures the filth and the beauty of 19th Century New York City, creating a nostalgia that demands a visit but forbids a permanent stay. Filled with politics, murder and thievery, Gangs of New York seems like the perfect fit for the man who made Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Casino.

5. Watchmen (2009) - You will never find a more detailed, enthralling examination of the super hero psyche than in Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the classic graphic novel. It is at once a murder mystery, love story, meditation on life and a piece of Americana all rolled into a stylistically captivating picture that lives up to the source material.

4. Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 (2003/2004) - For Quentin Tarantino, this is as epic as it gets. This is the blood-filled journey of the Bride (Uma Therman) to visit revenge on all the assassins who ruined her life until she gets to the top, to the man who took her in and then cast her out, the man called Bill (David Carradine). While there’s a definite shift in tone from the action-packed Volume 1 and the dialogue-driven Volume 2, both demand to be watched together. A mix of Spaghetti Western and Samurai Action Thriller, Kill Bill truly represents a meeting of the minds between East and West.

3. The Departed (2006) - Nobody really thinks of Boston on the list of crime havens in America, but don’t let all the chowder and hockey fool you – there’s a seedy underbelly to the capitol of Massachussets. Martin Scorsese finally won his long overdue Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture in one shot with this unbridled masterpiece. Taking the lives of two men living double-lives on both sides of the law (Leonardo Decaprio and Matt Damon), he masterfully constructs a cat and mouse game between them via the evil crimeboss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson in his last great performance). Those definitely weren’t pitty awards Scorsese got. This film is every bit as good as anything he’s ever done – maybe even better.

2. The Fountain (2006) - Not a lot of independent directors get the chance to spend real money on a vision, but Darren Aronofsky got that chance and didn’t waste it. He didn’t create a movie made for box office success (which it didn’t achieve) or critical acclaim (of which it was heavily divided). He created art. The Fountain is almost as hard to explain as it is to understand, but it is basically the story of man unstuc in time (to borrow a phrase from the late Kurt Vonnegut). Played by Hugh Jackman in an incredible performance that makes you forget all about the most popular super hero of all time, we see the protagonist bounce back and forth from being a 16th century Spanish Conquistador, modern day American docter and mysterious space traveler of the future all trying to save the same woman (Rachel Weisz) from death, which inevitably cannot be escaped through time. Or can it? There are tough questions asked in this movie with few easy answers given, if any, but it provokes just as much thought and emotion and wonder to garner comparisons to Stanely Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that’s no easy feat.

1. The Dark Knight (2008) - It’s hard to say anything original about this movie. It’s a crime drama wrapped in the guise of a super hero action movie with elements of romance, friendship and horror hidden inside. More importantly, IT SUCCEEDS ON EVERY LEVEL. It’s hard not to call this the movie of the decade given the sheer numbers, all 1,001,921,825 of them, which is the amount of money it eventually raked in, making it the highest grossing movie in U.S. history and second in the world to Titanic. While I can’t say I don’t miss the team of Tim Burton and Michael Keaton, this is certainly a welcome substitute. It’s just a shame that it only won two Academy Awards – one for Best Sound Editing and another for Best Supporting Actor for the late Heath Ledger in the role of his still young career.

All movies ***** (Five out of Five Stars)

Now, before I begin, I’m going to go ahead and get something out of the way. What I’m about to say, I will only say once, and once I do, it’s done. I’m not going to elaborate or give examples or put on any kind of show to prove my sincerity. I’m just going to say it: Adam Sandler is really good in this movie. Moving on…

It must be rough being a comedian. After all, in order to be successful, you usually have to expose all of your flaws for the amusement of others, not to mention having to endure the success and failures of the people working around you. Add that to practically living the life of a vagabond, and the glass isn’t always gonna be half full. That much makes up about ¼ of Judd Apatow’s 3rd film in the director’s seat. Then you’ve got another ¼ spent on contemplating death, another ¼ spent on contemplating life and finally ¼ about examing love in all its gooey glory. Needless to say, this isn’t your typical Judd Apatow fart jokes, beer and bongs type of movie (though there’s some of that, too.)

I’m not exaggerating when I say that there’s a lot going on in Funny People that won’t make you laugh. In fact, it will downright depress the hell out of you, but that’s the point. As opposed to the earlier Apatow films which basically took serious situations and skewed them into a funny “I get that” type of movie, Funny People is taking a situation that’s serious (finding out you’re going to die) and showing that it can’t be covered up.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t funny moments. You can expect all the great Apatow banter out of Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill with enough Jason Schwartzman to give it a good vibe that doesn’t feel like Knocked Up remixed. Even the scenes without words have strokes of genius (like Jonah Hill’s cat video on YouTube.) In fact, you could even say, without being too corny, that those funny moments, subtle as they are, are like the medicine keeping this movie from turning into a suicide tale.

Unfortunately, the range of depth in the 145 minutes of rising and falling is ultimately what holds the movie back. There are several moments of the movie where closure is finally met only to unfold another drama. At some point, you just wonder what the movie is actually getting at. Maybe that’s a little harsh. After all, it’s not difficult to figure out what the movie’s getting at. It’s just a matter of how many screw-ups and emotional steps backwards will it take to get there?

Funny People is not an opus. It’s just a long, hard look in the mirror for the people missing out on things as simple as spending time with your friends or enjoying your job. With an inferior cast, it may have just fallen apart into one big emotional train wreck, but the dialogue is great, the pacing is perfect and the cast… well, it certainly lives up to the caliber of casts Apatow has plucked from obscurity. (Seriously, wasn’t Adam Sandler dead or something?) And something has to be said of Eric Bana’s role in this film as the excitable Australian competition to the love story. If he was this good a villain in the new sputtering adaptation of Star Trek, I may have actually given a damn. Give this movie the time, and it and the many stories and side stories in this examination of the loneliness behind comedy will grow on you.

**** (4 out of 5 stars)

While most professional reviewers tend to use a 4 star scale, I’ve opted for the 5 Star system because it allows for more detail in accuracy. In other words, I can more precisely pinpoint where a movie stands against other movies without being misleading. For example, Roger Ebert gave both Spider-Man 2 and The Dark Knight a 4 star review which would lead the reader to believe they are on par with one another. THEY ARE NOT. On my scale, I would award Spider-Man 2 4 stars, indicating it as a successfully solid, though not entirely original film and The Dark Knight 5 stars indicating a wholly original masterpiece.

Also, websites that review movies tend to go with a 10 point scale issuing reviews like fractions (ex. 8/10). If you take into account my use of half a star (ex. ***1/2 = 3 and a half stars), then I am essentially following suit. The reason why I don’t completely convert is that, honestly, I don’t like the way fractions look. Music reviews are often done with 5 stars and it just looks better and more professional than saying “I give this film a 2/10.”

As for those who use the point scales (ex. 5.2/10.0), they can go fuck themselves. I don’t know what 5.2 means and if anyone says they do, they’re lying. Those scores are arbitrary and tell readers nothing. Naturally you find these on the most pretentious websites like pitchfork. For my opinion on pitchfork.com, please refer to the previous 2 sentences.
And so, to further give you, the people, a better idea of how I will be reviewing movies, here is a brief rundown on what my star system means:

0 = zero stars. A movie so bad, it should have never been made and can never be redeemed. (ex. Dragonball: Evolution)
* = one star. A movie in which nothing goes right and can’t even be appreciated on an ironic basis. (ex. Peter Jackson’s King Kong)
*1/2 = one and a half stars. A movie that has a good premise but unbelievably bad execution. (ex. Ghost Rider)
** = two stars. A movie that is “so bad it’s good”. They are very watchable but can’t be called “good” per se (ex. Plan 9 From Outer Space)
**1/2 = two and a half stars. A movie that can’t be defined as wholly good or wholly terrible. These tend to be movies of all style, no substance. (ex. Transformers)
*** = three stars. A movie that is enjoyable but contains many flaws. (ex. The Exorcist: The Beginning)
***1/2 = three and a half stars. A movie that has many good elements but too many bad ones to garner a true recommendation. These movies tend to be the few redeeming blockbusters (ex. X-Men Origins: Wolverine.)
**** = four stars. A solid and truly pleasing movie with very few flaws that simply lacks enough originality to get a higher rating. (ex. Spider-Man 2)
****1/2 = four and a half stars. A great film that has something small holding it back from being called a masterpiece. (ex. Sunshine)
***** = five stars. An undisputed masterpiece. These types of films are wholly original and go on to influence the way movies are made. (ex. Pulp Fiction)

I’m a huge Shell-head and I take great pride in reviewing this new Turtles Forever “for TV” movie.  The main plot centers around the Turtles of the 80’s and the 2000’s Turtles coming together to stop Shredder once and for all.

They find out about the new turtles when they are reported on the news for fighting in open public, which the present day turtles do not do. After they track them down, it’s an all out brawl as new and old enemies team together. The Shredders, BeBop, Rocksteady, Krang, Hun, Tokra, Razar, and every enemy they have faced in the movies and the TV series join in on the fight.

Fourth Wall talking to the audience, classic turtle moments, and upgraded foot soldiers all make the movie awesome. This was definitely a cheese movie, but adding in a dimension of the original Kevin Eastman’s and Peter Laird’s black and white turtles was great. The voice acting goes back and fourth, but that was the point for the 80’s turtles.

We get a glimpse of every Ninja Turtle from both movie series, all the comics, and even some “what if” era stuff. I was pleased with this movie as any true Shell-Head would be (we just enjoy this stuff).

4 out of 5

I’ll add this to the collection when it is released for sure.

Dragonball: Evolution – There are very few movies that have ever garnered as much hatred out of the geek population as this year’s bastardization of the Dragonball franchise and believe me, it’s all well-deserved. Dragon Ball: Evolution not only spits in the face of the Akira Toriyama classic, it makes the face completely unrecognizable.

The hero of the movie, Goku, is played by Justin Chatwin, a round-eye teenager filled with butterflies for the prettiest girl in school, Chi Chi, who is played by Jamie Chung, one of the few Asians in the film. You may remember Chung from MTV’s The Real World: San Diego. I will always remember her as that bitch who helped ruin Dragonball: Evolution. But wait! I haven’t even introduced the movie’s most ridiculous character, Bulma, a kick-ass high-tech espionage scientist (?) who’s after the dragonballs for scientific investigation.

Now, this was a movie I could tell was going to be bad from a distance but my girlfriend and I decided to give it a shot. After all, there are some good comic book movie adaptations out there that weren’t entirely faithful. The X-Men Trilogy were really good. The Batman films were really good. Wanted was supposedly really good, though my fear of Angelina Jolie’s lips prevented me from seeing it. Surely this adaptation of an anime/manga classic would at least be ok. At least there would be good fight scenes to look forward to. After all, they have Chow Yun Fat.

WRONG!

Yeah, Chow Yun Fat is in the movie but he spends way more time overacting than he does fighting, and when he’s not overacting, he’s doing this weird dance that no one understands and no one cares to explain. Worse than that, the fighting is almost nonexistant. No one ever trades more than a couple punches before the CGI takes over with unnecissary extreme closeups. Do I want to see the pores in Goku’s face as he hurls a bumble bee into his opponent’s mouth? No, I do not and no, I’m not making that scene up.

If there is one good point to this movie, it’s James Marster’s performance as the “evil” Piccolo. Never mind that he has no real motive or more than 10 lines of dialogue in the whole movie. In a film this bad, that’s a plus. He at least acts the way I would imagine evil Piccolo would act. Oh, wait! I don’t have to imagine! I can buy every episode of Dragonball, Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT on DVD and be much happier than with this piece of garbage.

It is rare that I choose to give a movie a review of zero stars, but this just may be the worst movie I’ve ever seen. In fact, it just may be the worst movie of all time. It’s so bad, John McCain should plead to Congress right now not to use it as a means of obtaining information from terrorists. I can only hope that it follows in the steps of failed comic book adaptations like The Punisher or The Fantastic Four and becomes targeted for a revamp by people who know what they’re doing. Maybe it can be redeemed by the Wachowski Brothers, who managed to successfully adapt Speed Racer for the screen in a way that was both faithful and artistically satisfying, though not financially so. But Speed Racer can find solace in knowing that it wasn’t beaten at the box office by a movie starring John Cena.

– (0 out of 5 Stars)

Ponyo – Have you ever seen Disney’s The Little Mermaid? Have you ever seen it on acid? Okay, so it’s not quite that different, but don’t expect your mama’s little mermaid with this new adaptation of the fairy tale classic by Oscar winning filmmaker and Japanese anime legend, Hayao Miyazaki.

The elements of the story are the same – there’s a little girl/fish who rebels against her father and escapes the sea for the love of a little boy. What are different are the perspectives. Ponyo isn’t Ariel. She’s not an angst-filled teenager better suited to star in a John Hughes film from the 80’s. In fact, she barely has any lines, save for a few 1-3 word sentences like, “Ponyo wants ham!”

Ponyo (voiced by Noah Cyrus) is truly treated like someone not human seeing the human world for the first time. For her, it’s exciting and thrilling and fun and it really rubs off on the audience. Each adorable line or face she makes is almost too much to take and believe me, audiences respond accordingly. This all makes her counterpart, the human boy named Sosuke (voiced by Frankie Jonas), all the more appropriate. While Ponyo remains utterly pie-in-the-sky gleeful, Sosuke is older than his years – he’s responsible and down to earth with his dreams and aspirations only reaching to having his Dad (voiced by Matt Damon) back home from the mysterious waves of the sea he sails.

The way these two play off one another, whether it’s their initially fun interactions or the more frightening crises that ensue, there is never an uninteresting or unquotable moment. More than that, their scenes show a growing reliance on each other. Ponyo needs Sosuke in order to survive in the humans’ world and Sosuke needs Ponyo to gain a semblance of joy in an otherwise serious life.

But this isn’t just their story. There are parents to consider and they also equally serve as important counterparts in this story of opposites. The one that gets the most screen time is Sosuke’s mother (voiced by Tina Fey) who is often a bit absentminded but nonetheless likable and, like Ponyo, needs her son to ground her in her quant little house on the hill. Ponyo’s father (voiced by Liam Neeson), on the other hand, is mysterious and irritable, living in an unending, inhuman castle beneath the ocean. He’s a kind of scientist with a coldly rational mind, especially in regards to his school of children of which Ponyo is the leader. Even more mysterious is Ponyo’s mother (voiced by Cate Blanchett), a mostly unseen goddess filled with love and magic who, in the end, carries home the film’s message of unconditional love, sacrifice and reconciliation.

Besides from having a unique story filled with memorable characters and a truly gifted voice cast, the cornerstone of this and every other Miyazaki film is the animation. The opening scene and several following minutes are wordless, much like Wall-E, bringing focus to the character’s interaction with their respective surrounding environments, but while Wall-E’s opening scene is a quiet, day-to-day routine that forces the foreign audience to meditate on the devastation around it, Ponyo is all spectacle, a grand exhibition of magic and science fusing together in a mixture of harmony and violence until Ponyo finally escapes the underwater castle. There’s literally action in every corner of the screen.

There’s been a lot of talk this year for Pixar’s Up, but don’t let that fool you – Ponyo has already grossed $200 million worldwide and has far exceeded the profit of any theatrically released anime in America several times over. This is an important film for all ages that will likely upset Pixar for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

***** (5 out of 5 Stars)

Zack Snyder’s visionary theatrical version of this blockbuster film can easily be summed up as pretty much the greatest film adaptation of perhaps the greatest comic book ever. As a comic book, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel (along with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns) broke new ground for what the medium was capable of in terms of character development and the realistic impact that unstoppable powers and egos could have on the world. Since then, the industry has absolutely flourished with elaborate and differing perspectives on the super hero genre thanks to titles like The Sandman, New X-Men and The Authority. As a film, it stands right alongside The Dark Knight, Sin City and X2 as another example of what this new Hollywood genre is capable of doing in the realm of art.

And that’s just the version we saw in theaters.

So what makes this new Ultimate Cut even necessary? In short, it’s a love letter to all those fanboys and girls out there who knew about Watchmen before it started gaining coverage on Entertainment Tonight. It is the most complete and, more importantly, faithful adaptation that could possibly be made and should be able to finally quench the thirst and calm the demands of that small but powerful minority that wished for that “one extra scene” from the comic that they didn’t get to see in theaters.

The biggest part noticeably absent from the theatrical and director’s cut versions is Tales from the Black Freighter, the story within the story of Watchmen, which has now been mixed in with the Ultimate Cut. TFBF represents the comic medium itself and features the exploits of pirates rather than super heroes (because who would want to read about them when they’re flying all around you?) As the main plot unfolds and more and more secrets and back stories are revealed, adding an uncommon depth to the murder-mystery, the initially pulpy TFBF gradually falls deeper and deeper into psychological horror and violence.

Interesting as it is, this side story was left out of the first two cuts of Watchmen, but was released straight to DVD as a separate animated feature. As an addition to the Ultimate Cut, it adds 26 minutes to the already overloaded content to bring the grand total running time to 251 minutes. THAT’S OVER 4 HOURS! That’s just about the longest movie experience this side of David Lean. Even the Grindhouse double-feature presented by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez back in 2007 was only 191 minutes, and that’s including all the fake trailers!

Despite this, however, the Ultimate Cut doesn’t lose pace. It’s still the same engaging dissection of the super hero genre it was in theaters, but at some point, regular people are going to want to go to the bathroom, eat a meal or *gasp!* go outside for a while during the course of 4 hours and not even this great film is going to appeal to them. Even the special features can be found on other releases, including “Under the Hood,” the uber-interesting fake documentary based on the “excerpts” of the original Nite Owl’s autobiography. These were originally supplemental material to several of the original comic issues and are sure to please any fan.

In short, buy this cut if you love – and I mean LOVE – the comic and wish to relive every single moment in all its twisted glory. That said, there is nothing wrong with the theatrical version and especially the equally accessible Director’s Cut. Both work better as a film you can just sit down, watch, enjoy and ponder over during the course of the day’s other activities rather than being something that replaces those activities all together.

**** (4 out of 5 stars)