Avatar
(Starring Sam Worthington, CCH Pounder, Sigourney Weaver)
There are films that are so jaw-dropping that you just have to give them their proper credit, even if they have a couple small flaws. Avatar is a multi-million dollar cinematic onslaught by mega-director James Cameron (Aliens, Terminator 2, Titanic).
In the future, humans have found a distant moon that contains a precious mineral. The problem is that the sexy, ten-foot-tall, blue-skinned natives are in the way of mining operations. So, the humans have made emissaries—biological avatars—that are run by people put into comas. They look exactly like the natives. By a twist of luck, a handicapped man (Worthington) gets the chance to walk again as one of these alien diplomats. He just needs to help convince the natives to move on.
It’s an elaborate plot with a decidedly eco-friendly theme. The alien tribes look like a breeding experiment between housecats, 
Smurfs and Native Americans. The entire moon is filled with music and light, dragons and fireflies. With a big sugary coating, Cameron’s heavy-handed theme tells us that Mother Nature is good, and war is bad. This preachy tone is the only problem with the flick.
However, the achievements of Avatar—the seamless mix of computer graphics and human actors, the completeness of this foreign world—make it easy to forgive Cameron for his simplistic soap-boxing. It’s nearly three hours of aural miracles and consummate mythology.
Nine
(Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson, Fergie, Nicole Kidman)
A movie about a genius director better have moments of cinematic brilliance and surprising and beautiful images. The best production team won’t save a lack of creative imagination, especially noticeable when you’re making a film about filmmaking.
Nine is a middling musical based on Federico Fellini’s wonderful classic flick 8 ½. When the Italian master made the original in 1963, he was artistically stuck, cobbling together a messy story about a writer/director who had writer’s block. We experience Fellini’s obvious visual genius, even in the midst of his self-referential bumbling.
So why make a musical about this? I’ve never figured that out. It seems the uniqueness of 8 ½ was Fellini’s fearless revelation about his own life, combined with his willingness to try anything.
Here, Day-Lewis plays the addled, self-aggrandizing director. The actor is appropriately brooding and tortured, but Nine never even attempts to show his talent; we never see his work. Also, the director’s alleged sexiness is buried under a disheveled depression. The women—Dench, Kidman, Cruz, and especially Cotillard (Ma Vie En Rose)—resurrect this mess. Otherwise, we’d have a meandering musical filled with forgettable songs about an over-indulged, sex-addicted artiste.
It’s not that I’m just comparing Nine to the Fellini film. Even director Rob Marshall was more adept when he made the Oscar-winning musical Chicago with nifty segues, memorable images and lively performances. The director’s artistry exhibited in Nine is overwhelmingly average.
Sherlock Holmes
(Starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Mark Strong)
Fact: Sherlock Holmes was very sharp. What we didn’t know was that he and his affectionate buddy Watson possessed super-human powers and a mastery of martial arts. Quirky director Guy Ritchie (Snatch) presents the flirty, bantering crime-solvers in a silly thrill-ride that totally reinvents the Arthur Conan Doyle characters.
Holmes (Downey) and his faithful assistant Watson (Law, in a somewhat codependent and very lovely interpretation) are on the trail of a cult-like madman (Strong) who seems able to cheat death. On top of that, after years of living together as confirmed bachelors, Holmes’ once-faithful “friend” Dr. Watson is taking their shared dog moving out to be with—gasp—a woman.
The lightning-fast film takes a decidedly comic approach, tossing in Victorian sociology, gay-friendly references, criminal malfeasance, and Hong-Kong style fighting. The explanation of the central mystery is merely a distraction.
However, director Ritchie has a gift with off-kilter fun. He also has two very entertaining lead actors. Their unusual relationship—which only needed one good hug to be considered completely gay—is really the key to re-energizing the Holmes film franchise.
