Avatar

The first part will be very general, then I'll give a spoiler warning before I get specific.

First the obvious. Avatar is a beautiful movie. I saw it in 2D. Once the crowds go down a bit, I might back and watch in 3D, as I've heard it might actually be worth it and not just distracting.

But I wonder if seeing in 2D allowed me to pay more attention to the plot and characters. I wasn't impressed. I found the story to be very predictable. Since there are many scenes in which you are just supposed to look at the scenery for several seconds, there are many scenes which allow you to stop and think. I guessed at what the upcoming plot would be. My guess was pretty much the whole movie.

I was disappointed by this because I thought I was predicting the first half of the movie, not the whole thing. In reviews, I avoided specifics. I read only the headlines or just the first few lines. One of those was Harry Knowles from Aintitcool.com. Right at the beginning of his review, he states that he loves the movie "because of the story."

I like the website because it does (or once did) give a good heads up about what's coming up in movie news. But Knowles isn't the brightest guy. His writings are grammatical nightmares, yet he has been accepted as a "writer." I know the stuff I write is garbage, but no one is taking me seriously. With Avatar, the story is good enough. It isn't bad, but it isn't great. It's good enough. To love it because of the story? Eh, that's somebody who is trying not to say "I like the pretty pictures" but is afraid to do so.

And I don't understand why. It's a technological masterpiece. But the story is slow, and not for the right reasons. Usually story takes its time to allow ideas to develop or, more importantly, to allow characters to develop. Avatar is almost devoid of characters, so this didn't happen. James Cameron could have cut 45 minutes or an hour out of this movie. It would have cost less. It would have more screenings in theaters. Everyone who has seen it still would have. It would have made more money.

Should you go see it? Yes. See it in the theaters. It won't have anywhere near the same impact on your small V or even your big TV. See it in 3D (I think).

And now, spoilers.

These aren't big spoilers, but since some of you are still planning to watch in the next week, this might give away a couple things.

Characters, characters, characters. It's a bad thing when the most interesting character is CGI. It says a lot about the technology of the movie. But making the humans interesting should be easy.

The human characters were as flat as the 2D in which I watched it. The two "villians," if that's the right word, were a corporate guy (Parker Selfridge, played by Giovanni Ribisi)and a military guy Colonel Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang). Wow. How creative. And guess what? The corporate guy acts - wait for it - out of greed! Weren't expecting that twist, were you? And the military guy wants power.

Here's another way they could have saved some money. They could have simply put an action figure of a guy in a suit on the screen. Pull his string and have him say "I want money! Let's do things for money!" Then simply put an action figure of a guy in a military uniform on the screen. Pull his string and have him say "I want to blow up things! Let's take over everything!" You wouldn't tell the difference.

And then there's Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington. There was such an opportunity with this character to make him interesting. There could have been some real character development if anyone had cared enough to try.

Sully is in a wheelchair. I think that's about as far as anyone went with him. But the plot requires Sully to go through a transformation. He needs to go from being a military follow orders type of guy to someone who completely turns around and fights against his own people.

There were three reasons for him to turn. The first is that he falls in love with Neytiri. I think the movie makes this part clear, and chooses to focus almost completely on this part. But there's more to it that could have (and I believe should have) been developed more).

The second is that he is a paraplegic. In his Avatar, he gets to walk and to run. When he first enters his Avatar, we see this as he goes off running. his excitement is so great that he doesn't follow orders for those couple minutes (which should have been a foreshadowing of things to come). Later on, Colonel Quaritch offers him a procedure to fix his legs if he follows orders. This should have turned into another layer of the moral quandary, but it isn't developed.

The third reason for turning is the most important. But it isn't really mentioned. He should have turned and sided with the Na'vi because it's right. Sully is a military guy. Military guys don't get to question whether things are right or wrong. They get to follow orders. He was dedicated enough to have become a paraplegic, we must presume in battle somewhere. For a military guy to go against orders and do what's right is a big deal. It wasn't here.

The turn for Michelle Rodriguez's character was even more sudden. She suddenly decided that she "didn't sign up for this." And pulls away. That moment was very out of place.

Honestly, what hurt my viewing the most is that I kept waiting for something great to happen. It didn't. I guess I wasn't as impressed with flying mountains as everyone else. It's a cool concept, but I didn't need to stare at them as long. Flying on a dragon type thing was cool for a few seconds, but not for as long as we had to watch it. So the movie is like 90% CGI. Wall-E was 99% CGI (pretty much everything but the Hello Dolly! shots), but it also had more character and heart.

I've only found a small handful of people who agree with me (here is Peter David, who stated some of what I said but much better than I ever could), so I'm probably totally wrong. I'm guessing that when Avatar makes it from the big screen in 3D to your TV in 2D, a lot more people are going to agree with me. And that makes me a bigger visionary than James Cameron.

Invictus

Invictus is a pretty good movie. It's isn't great, but pretty good. I don't know if it could have been much better.

It's a safe movie. It isn't going to offend or upset anybody but the most easily offended. For a movie that has issues of race at its core, that's saying something. But this isn't Spike Lee's version of South African Apartheid (given Lee and this movie's director Clint Eastwood's previous jabs at one another, I wonder if this could have been Eastwood's response).

I think it might have been tempting to show the darker side of what was going on in South Africa at the time of this movie, but Eastwood chose to keep the move accessible. Is that a bad thing? I think keeping it safe might have kept it from being a great movie, but I don't necessarily think it needed to be so.

There were a couple kids in the theater with their parents when I saw it. The oldest was probably in sixth or seventh grade, and the other a couple years younger. On their way out, they seemed to have really enjoyed the movie. This gives those kids something to think about at their level. And if people are going to be more aware of the history of Apartheid, things such as this movie will only help.

What they might not understand, as I didn't, are the rules of rugby. I have no rugby background at all. After watching, I had to do a little research to fully understand how everything worked. I wasn't totally confused, but if you don't know anything about rugby either, you might want to take five minutes and read about the rules before you watch.

A few people will likely be nominated for Oscars for their performances. Morgan Freeman is excellent as Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon is pretty good (though the Best Supporting Actor statue is already reserved for someone in a movie in my top 10).

The movie chose to focus part of its time on Mandela's security team. I think they needed to give that a little more time or drop it completely. I wouldn't be surprised if at one point in the scriptwriting process the story was being told through their eyes. I'm not convinced that part of the movie worked the way it was.

But again, Invictus is a pretty good movie. Based on a box office total of just over $20,000,000, not enough people saw this movie. More than twice as many people have seen Old Dogs. That's why the terrorists should hate us.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Precious

If my year end top 10 were a "best of" list instead of my 10 favorites, Precious would be on the list, and probably pretty close to the top. I'll be surprised if it isn't nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

With my favorite movies, there is usually some kind of emotional attachment to the movie. That's something I didn't particularly have with Precious. There wasn't something I that pulled at me. But I think that only adds to how good of a movie this is. I still liked it quite a bit even without that.

The performances are great all around. I've read a lot of buzz for an Oscar nod for Mo'Nique. It's definitely a great performance, but I don't really know who she is outside of this movie. By that I mean I haven't seen her in anything else that I know of, nor have I seen her on any talk shows.

I have, however, seen Gabourey Sidibe, who plays Precious, in an interview. She's a completely different person than Precious. It showed me how great her work was in the movie. I don't think I would have recognized Mariah Carey if I didn't already know she was in this movie. The acting is really great all around.

Precious shows a world that I'm not really used to. Chances are most of you aren't either. But it's a real world that everyone needs to be aware of. I don't think it would be such a bad idea if more people saw this movie and became more aware.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

I guess I have a bit of a history with the book The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I distinctly remember giving an oral book report on it in the fourth grade. I had to read a "humorous incident" from the book, so I read the part where Mr. Fox got his tail shot off. Since I remember doing the book report, most likely I never read the book.

While watching the movie, I didn't even remember any of that until that scene came up in the movie. It was a flashback of - just giving the book report itself, not anything from the book. But still, I had read other Roald Dahl books, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. I liked these books quite a bit and with each enjoyed multiple readings.

The movie The Fantastic Mr. Fox looks great. Ultimately, it's one of those movies where I think I might like looking at it more than I liked what was really happening.

But there's plenty more to like. I liked all of the voice work. I feel like the actors would have sounded close to the same if they had been in a live action Wes Anderson movie.

Of Anderson's movies, I like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. I watched Bottle Rocket not too long ago, but I had trouble getting into it. Same with The Life Aquatic.

The thing with his movies is they can be a bit too self aware. Or maybe to self indulgent. With Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, it works. The other two, not as much for me.

With The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson had to reign that in a bit to make it a more children friendly movie. There are still bits of it, but not as much. It's there in the confidence of the character of Mr. Fox, but it needs to be.

The movie is a bit slow at times. I felt as if there were times where they just wanted to play with the stop motion instead of just allowing the story to move along.

I also wonder how well kids would really like it. I think they'll like the visuals. But I don't see it as the type of movie that kids would love and want to see again and again.

But as an adult? I liked it quite a bit. I kinda wish they had taken on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in this way.

Paranormal Activity

With every review I've written over the past month, I've been comparing each movie with excellence. What I mean by that is I've liked several things in just about every movie. But if it wasn't excellent, then I've nitpicked. Yes, there have been some I've clearly not liked as much as others. But in the previous 22 days, I've liked many things about each movie whether I've stated so or not. That streak ends now.

To be clear, Paranormal Activity isn't my type of movie. It wasn't made for me. I'm not sure, but I think there needs to be something inside you that believes that this sort of thing could really happen. If you liked it, then this movie reached into you and found that part. I don't have that.

Why did I go? I guess I saw enough reviews that liked it. I think I heard enough people say that even if you don't like this kind of movie you'll still get freaked out. One Saturday last month it was about 3, I had to be somewhere at 7, so I had some time to kill.

Thinking back, I can't think of anything I enjoyed about Paranormal Activity. Oh wait - since it was only 86 minutes long, I wasn't bored for 87 minutes.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats doesn't come together as a movie. This is going to be a short review because I just summed up what you need to know.

The idea is interesting. A reporter discovers that the U.S. Army had a project that was investigating psychic abilities. These "Jedi Warriors" may or may not have actually had psychic powers. The movie wobbles on whether they really do or not. That's one of the weaknesses of the movie. They don't leave you wondering whether they do or know - that would be cool. But they sorta do, just a bit, but maybe no, not really.

Is it a comedy? Is it trying to give a message of some sort? You never really know after watching the movie. If it was a comedy, all the funny parts were in the trailers. It doesn't take itself too seriously, but that attitude makes the movie seem a bit lazy. If there is a message, I wasn't interested in discovering what it was.

Things happen in the movie for no particular reason. The ending didn't make sense. There were too many characters to make it into a personal story about any one of them.

It isn't a bad move - there are parts to like. It's just a lazy movie. I left The Men Who Stare at Goats thinking, "Eh? Who cares?" I think everyone had the same thought while making the movie.

Big Fan

Here's another movie that not many of you saw, and perhaps many didn't even hear about. I had to seek out a viewing in San Francisco

Big Fan stars Patton Oswalt as a, well, big fan of the New York Football Giants named Paul Aufiero. Paul calls into a sports talk radio show regularly with prepared scripts delivering smack talk, especially to Philadelphia Eagles fans. He then gets to meet one of his favorite players with disastrous results.

I listed to talk radio every now and again. My favorite show is Len "I'm a Law-yah" Tillem on KGO. People call into that show for legal advice. As Len himself states, the reason to listen is for the stories. For sports radio, I tune into Jim Rome every now and again, though you don't learn a lot about sports. It's pretty much just smack talk.

I've listened a lot, but have never really had a desire to call in. There was one show that I did call. It was a Saturday morning trivia show. They asked a question to which the answer was Plessie V. Ferguson, something that I teach. About 15 minutes went by without anyone calling to answer. They kept asking, so I finally called and answered it. They asked me a few more related questions,and I was able to answer them (pretty sure the follow up answer was Brown V. Board of Education Topeka , KS). I was promised a prize. The next week was the last time the show was on the air. I never got anything.

So what type of person does call in? Is it really the casual person just listening and having such an important opinion on the topic? I think rarely. I think that most of the callers are regulars. Big Fan presents Paul as a guy whose life revolves around the Giants and calling into this radio show. Other than that, he doesn't have a whole lot going for him.

Patton Oswalt is great in this role. You might only know him as a character on King of Queens. You might know his voice asn Remy in Ratatouille. If you haven't listened to his stand up, check out Feelin Kinda Patton. My favorite bit is his Black Angus commercial, but it's pretty funny from beginning to end.

This is a pretty good little movie. I really like these independent movies that comedians make to tell a simple story and show off some acting chops. There's no need for a $100 million budget. There's just a good story, good characters, and good acting.

I can recommend a couple more movies along the same line. First, I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With (despite the grammatically incorrect title) starring Jeff Garlin from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Second, The Hammer starring Adam Carolla. If you know him just as the guy from The Man Show, you;ll be surprised. All three movies are pretty good. I'd consider that a nice little film festival.