Last night I went along (alone) to see James Cameron’s Avatar. I went with an open mind despite what people have said about the story (or lack thereof of a well-written one), and came away completely in awe of what I saw. For me to say this is difficult since if there is just one little problem and I usually go right off the film.

Avatar is NOT without it’s problems. Some of the VFX still do look like very nicely rendered cut-scenes from a videogame. But WOW – WHAT A VIDEOGAME! For the most part, 90% of the film stands up to very close scrutiny, and it has to be said that the creature design and rendering is the very best I’ve ever seen in any movie to date. The work here is incredibly organic and even me, who has seen how artists, TDs, shader writers, animators, VFX supervisors and everyone in-between work – there were many a time when I just thought: “How the bloody hell did they do THAT?”. It was like watching your first major FX movie and haven’t a clue how it all works. Nor do you care. Well, I didn’t care how they did it. I was in awe with the animals of Pandora, the Na’Vi themselves were brilliantly animated and rendered. The forests, the mountains, everything – absolutely beautiful. It was like watching living art. All so organic, and yet all so digital and artificial at the same time.

I am in awe of what Cameron and the VFX teams have achieved. A lot of hard work and love has gone into making this film work. The story itself is simple, but works very well. It doesn’t feel like a three hour film at all – it all seems to go far too quickly. The 3D work itself works well enough, although I’ve always found that 3D doesn’t work well for me. But for Avatar it’s not in your face and does indeed bring the movie a bit more to life.

Cameron has upped the ante here. All those years he and his team have spent working on this film have paid off in spades. If there are sequels to this film, I look forward to them. Avatar is fantastically entertaining and I think it has plenty of re-watch potential. Looking forward to the Blu-Ray (oh the irony! Perhaps they could call it Na’Vi Ray instead) and a massive audio commentary from all involved as this film is one that’s worth exploring.

My rating: 9.9 out of 10

Jennifer and I head off to the cinema almost every weekend. We think it’s fair enough – we don’t drink (much), smoke (at all), own a TV (except the occasional programme via VoD). We generally rent movies that we miss from LOVEFiLM, we rarely buy any new ones. So the movie industry gets our money through our visits to the cinema, and it’s the best experience watching a movie (HD and Blu-Ray will only go so far on a 17″ laptop). Well, except when you have to deal with the more mature cinema goer who loves to give a running commentary (An Education), students who don’t understand what’s going on (It’s Complicated, which wasn’t) or the more immature teenager who just won’t shut up.

So I thought I would produce a regular feature of mini-reviews for the films we’ve seen.

First up we have It’s Complicated, written & directed by Nancy “The Holiday” Meyers and starring Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin. Streep and Baldwin are in fine form as a divorced couple (Jane & Jake) who re-ignite their passions together during a trip to New York for their son’s graduation. The problem is that Jake has remarried to the woman who was the cause of Jane & Jake’s breakup in the first place. Jake later reveals that he’s fallen back in love with Jane and that things are not going so well on the marriage front with Agness. Meanwhile Jane is enjoying the attention from Adam (played by Martin), who is Jane’s architect (she’s adding an extension to her already huge house!).

Needless to say there are all manner of complications arising from relationship she has with Jake and people get hurt (but unlike the typical American romcom fashion, it’s done in a very amusing way that caught me off guard!). Oh, but IN typical American romcom fashion there’s the usual drug references and getting stoned which IS funny, but is still an old device used to get laughs.

The star of this movie is not Streep, Martin or Baldwin, but rather John Krasinski who steals the show as Streep’s daughter’s finance, who plays witnesses to Jane’s liasons with Jake and tries to keep it from his finance. This guy is genuinely the best performer out the entire cast.

It’s Complicated is a good film. Not perfect, but certainly enjoyable.

Up in the Air, written and directed by Jason Reitman (son of Ivan “Ghostbusters” Reitman who also serves as this film’s producer), is another comedy. More sitcom than romcom, it stars George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizer employed by companies to deal with their staff redundancies. As a consequence of this, Ryan does a lot of flying and has amassed all the privileges that business class flying brings. Rarely does Bingham stay in one spot for more than a few nights – he is always travelling. As well as downsizing companies, he is a motivational speaker who gets paid lots of money to speak on his subject of “What’s in your backback?” (he essentially talks about life’s baggage and what you put in your “backpack” including relationships, financial commitments, and so on – and this plays an important part of the plot).

During one of Bingham’s trips, he meets Alex, a like-minded businesswoman who spends a lot of her time away from home travelling across the US. They hit it off, and eventually end up seeing it each other when their schedules allow.

Bingham is almost “grounded” by his boss who has taken on a newly graduated employee who intends to roll out a new video conference system to their clients so that nobody has to fly (and therefore save the company money in hotels and flight costs). Bingham quite rightly points out that this is very impersonal and takes the new graduate (Natalie) on his last set of trips so that she can see what he does and how it should be done. She’s still bright-eyed, somewhat naive, and has a boyfriend for whom she travelled the country for.

Up in the Air is a complex mesh of different emotions coming together (loneliness, committal, losing a job, fear, love, etc.) and the people it affects. Bingham himself does not believe in marriage but, as he gets closer to Alex, feels that he is ready to commit. Natalie something similar, but relates to her career. It’s an absolutely brilliant film and I believe Clooney’s best to date. Reitman, who has already done a brilliant job with Juno, excels himself here with both his writing and direction. It’s well worth the nominations it’s getting and I can see this film walking away with a lot of awards soon.

An Education, from BBC Films, is based around the memoirs of Lynn Barber and adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby (who also produces). It’s directed by Danish female director, Lone Scherfig.

The plot is quite simple: 16-year old student Jenny is working her way through her exams to get into Oxford. Her parents (her father in particular, being played by the wonderful Alfred Molina) is pushing her hard to exceed. But one day she encounters David, a thirty-something man whom she befriends on her way home from school. He connects to her interest in art, French and eventually he persuades her parents to allow him to take her to a concert in London, followed by dinner at an exclusive club where she meets David’s other friends Danny and Helen. David uses his smooth and sophisticated ways further on Jenny’s parents to allow her to go to Oxford as he claims that he knows C.S. Lewis and is an old ala-mater of Oxford himself. Things start to get deeper between David and Jenny and David concocts more lies to allow Jenny more freedom away from her parents. They eventually go to Paris where Jenny loses her virginity to David on her 17th birthday.

During all of this, Jenny’s teachers express concern and try to talk her out of the relationship. Eventually David proposes to Jenny and against her teachers’ wishes and concerns, drops out of school. Jenny’s parents are delighted despite that she’s not going to go to Oxford as they believe David has all the qualities that they’ve been looking for in a son-in-law and that Jenny will be well looked after.

Well, things progress further, but I shall not spoil them here. An Education is an excellent film that I thoroughly recommend you see before it leaves the cinemas (which, from the looks of things, is this week). It’s up for numerous awards this year too and I can also see this doing very well.

Summary:

It’s Complicated: 7 out of 10
Up in the Air: 9 out of 10
An Education: 9 out of 10

Roland Emmerich’s latest opus is three hours too long and is so politically correct[*] that it makes New Labour look bad.  It features more cliches than a cliche pie.  The typical dysfunctional family is featured, and you just know that it’ll be okay in the end.  Which is the case.

Do not expect good storytelling or diagloue, because there are none whatsoever.   The visuals are perhaps the only good thing about this movie, and even then, the CG overload this film uses makes you wonder how much damage this film has done to our environment given the total amount of wattage and carbon produced by each post-production facilities’ renderfarms.    This is massive waste of electricity and hard work.

In short: It’s alright I suppose, but very silly and worth watching only once.

[*] Except if you’re not American.  If you’re British, French, Russian, Chinese, Arabian or Indian, then expect stereotyping to the hilt.

.. and it was rather good.  In fact, technically, this was one of the best films I've seen for a long time.  The visual effects are outstanding, the stunts and physical effects even more so.  The acting and direction extremely impressive.
But.
It's pacing is all wrong. 

I realise that this is a complex story to tell – having to set-up exposition of the characters and events, etc. But even so this is going into so much detail that by the end of the film you don't really give two hoots (ha!) about the characters you've just seen.  I think the problem is that while Snyder and his team have been trying to faithfully adapt the graphic novel, they're forgetting that this is a film.  Sure, they make changes to make the novel fit the medium of film – but ultimately it's essentially the entire graphic novel shoved into a film shaped hole.  Which does not work out too well.

The film is dark and violent, and impressively so in places.  It actually shocked me just how graphic the blood and guts got at some points and you could hear the younger members of the audience (i.e. anybody less than 30) whoop with delight as various characters splatter across the screen, or as bones break and arms rip open.  It both impressed and horrified me in equal measure.
The soundtrack is simply wonderful.  One to listen to over and over again.  Made up from classic songs from the 80's and beyond, along with a highly original score, this is something the film can rightly be proud of.  The music was part of this film's identity right from when the trailers hit the 'net.

It has been said the people who have not read the graphic novel will be left confused.  Not so.  I am one such person and managed to keep track of everything that was going on, despite the pacing of the storylines.  Ultimately this is a film that you will most definitely want to read the source material to.
Watchmen is by no means perfect, but it is a film that Zack Snyder and his production team, as well as Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures and Dave Gibbons can be proud of.  

And well done my former employers, MPC, for making Night Owl's flying ship look utterly convincing and wonderful.  And for the other VFX guys that breathed life into Dr. Manhattan – an excellent achievement in digital character effects work.
A good 8/10.