Another 'Avatar' meets expectations

  Avatar: Fire and Ash,  the third movie in the Avatar series which began in 2009, is three hours long, and the version I saw was presented in 3D. That's too many threes as far as I'm concerned. Together, director James Cameron's Avatar series would take nine hours and nine minutes to watch, longer than the average workday.

  Let's be clear: Length in itself isn't a worthy criterion for judging a movie, but when a story becomes this gargantuan, it gives me pause and raises questions about whether its themes and characters merit such treatment.

   OK, enough eye-rolling about length. I leave it to you to answer the question about the depth of Avatar’s themes and whether each additional movie becomes more than a search for ways to extend the series. 

   As Avatar movies go, this one pulls out all the stops, wrapping up loose ends and adding new wrinkles -- all presented with Cameron's signature capacity for extensive, encompassing world-building. That’s another way of saying, the movie holds its own, providing you're a fan. Newbies needn't apply

   The loose ends Avatar: Fire and Ash wraps up can't be revealed here without spoilers, but I can say that the movie provides an overdose of sonic and visual excitement, most of it involving heavy combat.

   Cameron and his team create lots of dazzling imagery to support a variety of plotlines and a couple of villains. Varang (Oona Chaplin) leads the barbaric Ash People, a Na'vi clan that can't quash its savage bloodlust.

   Varang, by the way, sports a spiky red headdress that stands out nicely against her Ashen Mangkwan complexion. The Mangkwan are also called the Ash People, which brings me to another point. Cameron expands his complex universe of characters and ethnicities so much that his movie practically requires an annotated glossary.

   As mean as ever, Colonel Miles Quartich (Stephen Lang) adds more villainy, joining with Varang to defeat the nature-loving Na'vi.  In a Star Wars-like twist, we learn that the Colonel is the father of his human son Spider (Jack Champion), a young man who lives with the  Na'vi. Spider wants to be regarded as one of them, despite genetic differences.

   In another father-son dynamic, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) argues with his son Lo'ak's (Britain Dalton), a kid who blames himself for his brother's death -- in the previous movie, I think. 

   For a shift, Lo'ak is given narrating chores, a useful aid for those who tend to be overwhelmed by the story's complexities, which include the addition of a trading tribe that ... well ... handles trade.

   Zoe Saldana returns as Neytiri, Jake's wife. She objects when Jake decides that he should acquire guns to fight the human colonialists who loom over a fractious adventure  that puts high-tech savvy and tribal wisdom at odds.

   Cameron stirs in spiritual elements as well. Teenage Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the adopted daughter of Jake and Neytiri, has a special connection with Eywa, the deity that presides over Pandora, the moon that humans want to inhabit, presuming they can do enough genetic tinkering to breathe Pandora's air.

   Cameron keeps the movie's various plot threads going as he builds toward a finale in which he uses every trick in the book, including a literal cliffhanger. Fire and Ash may not be the last Avatar movie, but it boasts some big, noisy heft.

  All of this happens in service of the need to preserve ecological order by defeating the savage Ash People and the unscrupulous human invaders, who command enough weapons to set off explosions in several galaxies.

    I'd be lying if I told you I was familiar with the entire Avatar lexicon. And my heart sank a little when I learned that Fire and Ash was going to unfold over three hours. At some point, visual pyrotechnics become normalized and wonder evaporates.

    Look, Cameron's abundant and carefully detailed displays of imagination provide sufficient reason to conclude that the director won't cheat his fans.

    For an ongoing series -- more movies evidently are planned -- that's saying something, three-plus hours worth of something, but still something.

    

Sights and sounds dominate new 'Avatar'

 

  You almost can write a review of Avatar: The Way of Water without seeing the movie. In the hands of director James Cameron, you can be sure the movie will boast an abundance of visuals that dazzle and delight.

  In this case, kudos to Cameron for underwater footage that features beautifully imagined sea creatures and flora. If you see the movie in 3D, you may feel as if you can touch what you're watching.

   When it comes to the technical aspects of imaginative expression, Cameron excels, and his mixture of live and digital imagery unfolds seamlessly.

   You also know that, in broad terms, the movie, like the first installment, will pit environmentally oriented tribal creatures of the planet Pandora (good) against the military/industrial forces of people from the dying planet of Earth (bad). 

    You also know that Cameron will freshen the story, in this case focusing on the children of Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a trio of kids who are also befriended by Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), a girl whose mother Grace (also Weaver) appeared in the last installment. 

    I’m not going to get into the genetic history of these characters because ... well ... beats me.

    Not surprisingly, the movie's third act offers a tremendous jolt of action, and, unlike what you'll find in the work of some of his contemporaries, Cameron's combat proves legible. You can tell what’s happening. Really.

    In full awed-by-nature mode, Cameron also pays homage to whale-like creatures — here called tulkuns —- giant sea mammals who are intelligent and helpful. 

    The tulkun are linked to a newly introduced tribe, the Metakayina, Pandora island folks who can swim underwater for long periods and who have developed an ethos based on their relationship to the sea and its creatures. 

    The plot begins moving when Sully and his family take refuge among the Metakayina, who are ruled by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). The children of this royal pair interact with Jake and Neytiri's kids, giving Cameron an opportunity to explain Metakayina culture while offering some fairly typical teen conflict.

   You also know that Sky People (Earthlings) will be greedy and brutal. The Sky People have devised a way to use the memories of the previous military characters to create clones that appear to be Na’vi. So Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the last movie's villain, has a tail and a narrow Na’vi physique.

    Of course, he's still a jerk.

    Motivated by something akin to revenge, Quaritch wants to destroy Jake, ostensibly because Jake has become the leader of the rebels. 

   Every time, Quaritch opens his mouth, the movie sounds as if it's channeling a Vietnam war movie, complete with episodes in which soldiers attempt to brutalize the local population of Pandora's islands.

    All this means that The Way if Water has been engineered to generate big-time box office returns by filling the screen with  better realized visuals than can be found in the first edition — and those were pretty impressive, too.

   Shifting the focus to teenagers and turning Jake into a stern but worried dad adds a more juvenile flavor, but most adults probably won’t mind. 

    Look, if you’re searching for a sophisticated story, eloquent dialog, and revelatory thinking, Avatar probably is not the place to start. 

     Cameron aims for immersive experience, so much so that when you visit a new environment, you may feel like you’re entering another terrifically designed attraction in the Cameron collection of theme parks.

    I don’t mean that as a criticism but as a way of suggesting how it feels like to watch a spectacle-oriented movie, which has an ending (several actually) in which Cameron keeps trying to top himself and often succeeds. 

   In the idyllic world of my imagination, The Way of Water wouldn't  be an event movie that's poised to break records for popcorn sales. But in the real world governed by spinning turnstiles, we probably should be grateful that The Way of Water comes from Cameron, a filmmaker who gives audiences what they pay for — richly realized journeys to other worlds.

    The Way of Water, if you haven't heard, is three hours long, but I wasn't much bothered by its length. It did, however, give me time to think. During an underwater battle involving a sinking vessel, for example, I couldn't help asking myself, "What? Cameron didn't get enough of this with Titanic?"

The moral: Be careful who you rob

Don't Breathe is effective, but not without some of the baggage of contemporary horror.

I'm generally of two minds about most contemporary horror. On one hand, it's easy to admire the extreme efficiency and imaginative daring that's required to freshen a well-worn genre with brutal, new twists.

On the other hand, I'm usually wary about the degrading violence that can crop up in such endeavors, and I often find myself wondering why I'm being asked to watch characters who are being terrorized in obviously twisted ways.

The new movie, Don't Breathe, may be more of a thriller than a display of gory horror, but it's the latest example of a movie that struck both nerves with me.

The good news: Director Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead) has made a movie that boasts imaginative twists (the perpetrators of a crime become victims) while setting off a chain reaction of taut suspense.

The premise: Three would-be burglars encounter a fierce homeowner, a blinded Iraq war veteran who has some $300,000 hidden away in his Detroit home. The money is a payout the man won when his only daughter was killed in an automobile accident.

The trio of robbers (Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto) have been invading homes with some degree of success because Minnette's Alex has a father who works for a security company. Alex knows when homes will be vacant and how to stymie security systems.

As the three young people confront the blind vet (Stephen Lang), they're constantly trying not to run into him. They'll turn a corner, and he's there -- armed, dangerous and serious about killing these invaders. The creak of a floorboard can prove fatal. The ability to remain frozen becomes imperative.

To add additional flavor, Alvarez sets the movie on a street where all the houses but one are abandoned. Alvarez uses the worst parts of Detroit to set a tone. It's worth remembering that what's happened to some of Detroit's neighborhoods constitutes a real horror, one that Alvarez might have used to greater thematic advantage.

The three burglars are locked in the house by the veteran, who has a vicious Rottweiler and secrets that are best discovered in a theater. Let's just say, the basement (where else?) provides a stage for some disturbing sights.

The characters are given only rudimentary motivations, but Don't Breathe shouldn't (and won't) be confused with a character study. It's a thrill machine that wants to work an audience over -- and it does. We're locked in the house with the invaders and the infuriated veteran who's trying to get rid of them.

All well and good for those who like their suspense tainted with horror, particularly if it doesn't involve supernatural mumbo jumbo.

But then there's the sick part, which includes a wince-inducing scene involving a turkey baster. No, I'm not going to say more.

Put another way: Alvarez doesn't quite transcend the genre trappings he so gleefully embraces, but if you like this sort of thing, you'll find yourself in capable hands.