Avatar: An IMAX 3D Experience [2009] • USA

I've finally seen Avatar in all its glorious 3D IMAXness. I applaud the commitment and the massive amount of work that went into making it, which is just a different way of saying I give it an A for effort, but I'm not sure I'm ready to respond to it as merely an experience and set aside thoughts on how it fares as a film.

The problem with, like, solidly professional filmmakers who make big ass films like this is that they often rely on cardboard cutout stereotypes for character development. For every beautiful set piece, every touching ritual or philosophical bit of soul candy in Avatar, and there are lots of them, there are moments of groan out loud, eye-rolling plot points and dialog. I understand the need for expediency when creating a brand new world and trying to tell a story within it (within the running time of a movie) but that doesn't mean it's exempt from taking hits for it. If you are the type to overlook things like this, like so many seeds in a watermelon, then you will probably enjoy this movie, a lot. And by 'things like this' I mean almost all the moments and characters in the film that are negative in some way. The Colonel, why is he so shiny? Maybe there are tools like him in real life but he seems more irratating than badass. As good as Giovanni Ribisi is, he really goes dumpster diving for this role. Sigourney Weaver plays an ultimately good character, and it's actually developed pretty well, but every time she has to act tough, or act like a bitch, I sighed silently in protest of the script. The same is true of Tsu'tey, the jilted heir.

Creating conflict and character development in films is tough. At almost three hours, the film didn't feel long to me at all. I was never bored and if some of the blunt shallowness could have been presented in a more ripened form by extending the running time I would have been happier, overall.

I don't mind one bit that Avatar is a story that we've heard before and will hear again. That's the nature of good stories, educational fables. They keep getting retold. All in all, Avatar has some incredibly beautiful scenes and some very uplifting and touching moments and if you're not a film creep like me who prefers character studies to fantasy and action, you will love this movie.

★★★★

Director: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez

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Paranormal Activity [2007] • USA

Don't fall for the stories of people walking out of this movie because it's too scary. It doesn't even pretend to be scary until at least an hour into it. Somebody's leg is being pulled. And speaking of pulled legs ... that is the only scary scene in the movie.

There are allegedly three different endings to the film. I saw the original one ... and it's not scary or satisfying at all. There's a little bit of off-screen screaming that abruptly turns into silence. OK, that can be unnerving but it's just a technique. It doesn't move the story to anywhere that matters. The ending being shown in theaters now might be better--a whole bunch more technique with a frightening image or two that is over with quickly. The original peters out to nothingness for far too long and has no meaning.

Even if we grant that either or both of the endings I didn't see kick total ass, that doesn't make it a good film. It makes it three minutes of coolness that requires ninety minutes of suffering to get to.

The guy in this film is a completely unlikeable moron. The girl is OK but I never really thought she was scared, more just annoyed by her idiotic day-trader boyfriend. I think everyone acknowledges that this film is mostly, for at least an hour, nothing but set up before anything happens, and that's too much time spent with bad actors working without a script. There's nothing subtle about it.

★★

The Happening (2008) • USA • M. Night Shyamalan

Confession: I watched this movie and thought it was unrelentingly, embarrassingly bad. It looked pretty good, it had that Shyamalan style, but too much of the dialog felt bullied onto the characters. I couldn't believe how unnatural it sounded, how forced and amateurish it felt for the purpose of filling in plot. And it's a message flick—"we've abused the planet so don't be surprised if it fights back some day"—and message flicks, in my experience, are the worst offenders in the bad movie department because the message, and trying to make the point, often get in the way of making a good film.

Then I read a brief comment from a reviewer at the MRQE: "Shyamalan doesn't conform to the needs of modern movie goer zombies. It doesn't mean he sucks. It means you don't get it. At least someone still takes risks in the ART of cinema. It's not unintentionally hilarious. It's a blatantly comedic satire."

Whoa! That changes everything. Satire gives Shyamalan a free pass from ridiculous straight through to funny; except I'm not sure what he is satirizing. Himself? Message movies? Horror movies? Science? What? Doesn't satire involve an obvious subject in order for the satire to be got? I'm not going to hold the MRQE reviewer to his literal words because if The Happening is "blatantly comedic" I have lost my sense of humor completely. There is the part with the greenhouse guru—who pretty much solves the mystery of the Event by declaring that plants, because they can't run around and throw punches, develop neurotoxins to fight off threats to their existence—and his ironic enthusiasm for bringing hot dogs along on the getaway trip. That was funny. When he asks Mark Wahlberg and then Zooey Deschanel if they like hot dogs, they both respond negatively, but not so much as in "No, they give me the creeps", but more like "Not really, but more importantly your enthusiasm for them is giving me the willies."

Satire can also bring forgiveness to plot wonders and plot holes. One of the more uncomfortable moments in the film for me is when John Leguizamo decides to turn back and go into the dead zone to look for his wife. He is about to entrust his daughter's safety to Mark and Zooey but when Zooey reaches out to take his daughter's hand John barks at her: "Don't take my daughter's hand unless you mean it." On paper the line is in character, perhaps, but in performance it's way out of line. Are we supposed to laugh at the pain in Zooey's eyes as she reacts to this idiotic ungratefulness? I dunno. I don't get it. Shyamalan could very well be forging a new path, creating his own rules for satire, or deconstructing it and tossing aside certain aspects, like humor, for the sake of his art.

There's the famous bit of dialog from the movie trailer where Wahlberg confronts the getaway train conductor (or whatever he is) about why they can't get back on the train and keep going. The conductor says, "We've lost contact." Wahlberg asks, "With who?" and the conductor replies "Everyone." That seems pretty final until a few scenes later where a woman is talking on her cell phone to her daughter who's back in the infected zone. Mark walks up like Jack from the TV show Lost and offers instructions to pass along to the daughter of the hysterical woman who puts the call on speaker-phone so we can all hear her daughter die. Cut. There's the scene where someone whips out an iPhone and plays a high quality video that was just sent to them from someone in the infected zone. I'm not going to tell what the video shows, suffice to say it's blatantly comedic. As is the notion of running away from the wind but I'm not bringing that up.

I have an extremely high tolerance for the gravity of plot as it weighs on a story. I'm not deducting points for any failure to bear that burden; I'm deducting points because so many of the scenes are written badly. And the story is stupid. Yes, playing the satire card shines a new light on everything but I'm not sure it makes anything more attractive. I'm reminded of a Seinfeld episode where an elderly couple are admiring a giant portrait of Kramer and the guy says something to the effect of "It's obscene. I can't turn away." Honestly, that's how I feel about The Happening. It's so bad it has to be brilliant. But blatantly comedic? I'm not sure. Your mileage may vary.

★★

The Ruins (2008) • USA

And now for something completely different. An angry temple that eats people; no over-sized half-wit with a chainsaw in this one. Instead, we have blood thirsty shrubs with the ability to reproduce sounds they hear, like cell phones and screaming. They literally get under your skin and when you die they drag you away. If you scream they mock you.

There isn't much particularly scary in this film, but there are a handful of squirm in your seat moments. I like the trend in recent horror movies to keep the gore less gratuitous and more necessary to the plot. Quality over quantity. Give the the special effects department some props for this one.

Jonathan Tucker is a little miscast, I think, but the two girls are pretty good. A couple other bearded guys play meat puppets. They all suffer while we look on. It seems a little odd that this group of kids witness the vines killing and dragging one of them away and then the rest of them just go to sleep in a tent and get up the next morning ready for more worries. Aside from that ....

★★★

Forest of Death (Sum yuen) (2007) • Hong Kong • Danny Pang

It's no secret that the Pang Bothers aren't big on script talent, but good lord, this was embarrassing.

A rape/murder takes place in a forest that is infamous as a mecca for suicide. A botanist is researching the ability of plants to communicate with people. His girlfriend is a tabloid TV reporter sensationalizing the ghostly aspects of the forest. A detective, investigating the rape/murder case, believes that plants can act as witnesses so she gets the botanist to bring his equipment to the forest and sets up a re-enactment of the crime where the plants will act as lie detectors.

I'm not kidding.

I'm not necessarily against inadequate stories but the hilarity of this one infiltrates everything else to the point that it becomes impossible to take it seriously. The actors don't seem dedicated to their characters, nothing appears genuine here. I love the Pangs and think they often make engrossing films, sometimes despite the stories, but this one is just too in-your-face dumb.

★

Last Quarter (Kagen no tsuki) (2004) • Japan

A good movie, maybe, to those it's meant for, but not me. I could barely sit through it. I don't think it is necessarily a poorly made film. It's a film clearly targeted at Asian early- and pre-teens with its inclusion of super-secretive Japanese rock star Hyde in a prominent, though not leading, role. Every time he appears on screen I roll my eyes and groan because he looks like a Keith Partridge wannabe trying to appear tough by smoking cigarettes. He might be a talented musician but he's a terrible actor, at least in this film.

The rest of the cast does a credible job. Model, actress and hair-do, Chiaki Kuriyama is always refreshing on screen. Western audiences may recognize her as Gogo from Quentin Tarentino's Kill Bill Vol 1. She appears to play the piano quite well, vamping on the film's musical theme a couple times. I like the theme a lot, but in the end this modern fairy-tale is just too sugar-coated and precious for my aged sensibility.

★★