Avatar

An experience not to be missed, James Cameron’s long-awaited, super-expensive venture into 3-D is a mélange of movies you’ve seen before, presented in a way you’ve never seen. At first I was aware of the 3-D lenses themselves, with their layers perceptible like floaters in one’s eyeball, but then I was simply immersed into a swooning depth of field as an alien world was penetrated, and finally the dimensions resolved simply into a more rounded way of viewing things, aside from a few “duck! here it comes!” moments. Blending Cousteau with Costner, eye-popping (un)nature documentary with primitive parable, all-over-the-place parallels to contemporary politics with gameboy blasting away, this film has something for everybody, but ultimately too much and too little to make it the future of film. It’s cowboys and Indians, it’s interstellar space opera, it’s ecological fable and New Age spiritualism, it’s kick-ass battle scenes and cross-species love story. It’s too much, but it’s quite a ride. You’d be well advised to respond, “I see you.” (On the other hand, you wouldn’t be amiss if you left the movie when Sigourney Weaver does, unless you’re a connoisseur of explosions and mayhem.) Another technological breakthrough of this film is in the evolution of the CGI technique of “performance capture,” to the point where an actor can be slipped seamlessly into the skin of an alien being. This is not a development I would expect to be thrilled by, but is in fact pretty thrilling. It doubles down on the meaning of the word "avatar." The story of this film is that the story and the characters are sort of beside the point, but when it comes to production values, it can’t be beat. (2009, Beacon) *8-* (MC-83)