Avatar: Fire and Ash – Movie Review

TL;DR Avatar is pomp and circumstance like no one else in the business is doing at the moment, except maybe the other Avatar films, which are doing the same thing very much.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid to see this film.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

The Wind Traders.

Avatar: Fire and Ash Review Introduction

Truly, there is nothing out there at the moment with the ambition and multi-coloured excellence like Avatar. Just three hours of non-stop visual excellence for your eyeballs with a sheer tenacity that we don’t see come out of Hollywood much anymore. But, this is the third outing in the series, and the question is: can it keep feeling fresh coming back to the same world again and again? Before we jump in, I do want to make clear that for this review, we watched the standard presentation, so no 3D, 4DX or other extras other than the meal I ordered halfway through because I splurged on the nice seats. So, we won’t be able to comment on whether the 3D, etc., is worth the ticket price.

So, to set the scene, everyone is still reeling from the end of Avatar: The Way of Water, where to save his family, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri’s (Zoe Saldaña) son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) sacrificed himself to save his family, and Spider (Jack Champion) no less. Everyone is grieving in their own way, and most of those ways are not very helpful. However, after some battery mix-ups show how vulnerable Spider is out here in the wilds. The parents decide it’s time to send Spider back to the researchers, where he will be closer to humans and safer. It is a long trip back, full of dangers, but not just from humans/sky people. For within the Navi, there are the Mangkwan clan led by Varang (Oona Chaplin), who are raiding and killing all those they come across.

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Avatar: The Way of Water – Movie Review

TL;DR –  A visual masterpiece and powerful themes mark a solid return to Pandora   

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film

Swimming with the Tulkun

Avatar: The Way of Water Review

Back in 2009, I might not have gotten all the themes Cameron was dropping, but I felt the power of narrative and the world of the first Avatar. However, I will be honest in that I have not really thought much of the film much since then. Every couple of years, there were mentions of going back into the universe, but they never eventuated. Well, I was surprised as everyone when this finally started coming together 13 years later, but then I re-watched the first Avatar in the cinemas and was reminded how good this world was. That screening primed me to return to Pandora, and I am glad I did.

So to set the scene, in the years since pushing the sky people back into orbit and skulking back to Earth, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have started a family and live with the rest of the Na’vi people in the forests. But after many years of peace, the sky people return and begin a literal scorched earth policy. Jake fights back, but when his kids Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), Spider (Jack Champion), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) are put in the line of fire as the family is directly targeted, they decide to leave to limit reprisals. However, no matter how far you run, your responsibilities or a genetically resurrected hellspawn that will try to hunt you down.

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Movie Review – Mary and the Witch’s Flower (Meari to Majo no Hana, メアリと魔女の花)

TL;DR – A beautifully realised world that blends the magical and the real, and while it needed a bit more work structurally it was a joy to watch.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – No

Mary and the Witch's Flower

Review

Back in 2014, there was one of those announcements that come up every now and again that rocked the cinematic community, Studio Ghibli was halting production after the notice that Hayao Miyazaki one of its founders was retiring. Now in the preceding years, Miyazaki has returned to Studio Ghibli, but with the studio being in a state of flux many of its animators struck out on their own and formed Studio Ponoc. Well, today we are taking a look at this new studio’s first feature film Mary and the Witch’s Flower.

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Movie Review – Collateral Beauty

TL;DR – Collateral Beauty has me wondering how projects in Hollywood gets greenlit, how did this mess of a film pass through so many different layers of approval, and at no point did someone go ‘Hey maybe this is a terrible idea for a film’

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

Collateral Beauty. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review

It is ironic that a film about an advertising company would be lambasted in the press and critic circles for the advertising of the film. Indeed, all of this would actually be quite amusing if not for the fact that Collateral Beauty fails spectacularly on nearly every front. How a film with this much talent, yet such a clearly terrible premise for a film, got put into production I do not know. Of course there are a few saving graces for Collateral Beauty, which is what stopped it from getting a lower score than this, but I can tell you right now, unless we have a truly terrible year for cinema I know this will be on my worst films of 2017 list, and we are only three films into the new year.

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Movie Review – The Dressmaker

TL;DR – Not what it seems, which is good, because it is better than it seems

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Dressmaker. Image Credit: Universal.

Review

Wow, what a fascinating film. To be perfectly honest I was not going to go see The Dressmaker, but a colleague of mine challenged me to see a film I would not normally see, and boy did I end up picking a good one. The Dressmaker tells the story of Myrtle ‘Tilly’ Dunnage (Kate Winslet) who at the start of the film is arriving back in her hometown of Dungatar after leaving as a child under the cloud of scandal. She is back to see her mother Molly (Judy Davis) who has in the preceding years suffered from dementia and become a recluse in her house, garnering the nickname Mad Molly. But for Tilly, time away from Dungatar has meant learning fashion design from the greatest minds of London, Paris and Milan and maybe, just maybe she can use her talents as a dressmaker to win over the town. And in a normal film that would be that, stick a couple of scenes of a shirtless Liam Hemsworth and call it a day, but The Dressmaker is more than that, and it is so much better for it.

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