Bear Flag Blog

Avatar - 8/10

A highly enjoyable film, although not one for the thinking man. The good guys are good guys, the bad guys are bad guys, and the savages are so incredibly noble that they can actually bond with the planet through their queues.

We saw it in 3D and I greatly appreciated the complete dearth of 3D gimmickry; nothing jumped out at the audience despite the profusion of bows and arrows and falling things. The 3D was used only to give the imagery depth of field, and oh! What imagery! Avatar is a gorgeous movie, from the blue cat-aliens to the floating rocks to the glowing forests to the mech hangars. A true feast for the eyes.

Which is its real power, frankly, because the story is pretty hackneyed and utterly one-sided. And in addition to the aforementioned 'noble savage' conceit (which has long been one of my pet peeves) it has a whopper of a deus ex machina ending. In fact, the story is so annoying that it underlines the truly awesome nature of the visuals in that I quite enjoyed the movie overall.

So take your eyes and leave your brain at home.

Sherlock Holmes - 7/10

I was interested to see Guy Richie's take on Sherlock Holmes, and having seen it, my reaction is a shrug. Certainly a vigorous, fisticuff-oriented Sherlock Holmes is entirely acceptable to the canon, but Robert Downey Jr. just wasn't him. The story was tepid, the action engaging but not thrilling, the accents were dishwater. Throw in a lack of the elements that make a period movie truly period, and a lack of the intellect that makes Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes, and this film was just another forgettable action movie.

Also, Jeremy Brett is God. But I approached the film with an open mind, really I did.

Daybreakers - 6/10

As a connoisseur of vampire movies I wanted to like Daybreakers. The setting, a world where almost everyone is a vampire, farming the few remaining humans, is both intriguing and the problematic endgame of so many other vampire movies. I am a big fan of Sam Neill and Ethan Hawke both; the promise was there.

But ultimately the movie was unsatisfying. It went for too many of the cheap horror movie gimmicks (e.g. a shrieking bat shooting across the scene to scare the audience; the use of this old chestnut to open the film was a bad sign, and it wasn't the last time) and they vigorously went for dramatic visuals at the cost of all logic.

A lot of discarded potential, here - opportunities to comment on the human condition or to introduce moral complexity were invariably sidestepped in favor of a few more bags of spurting gore. Alas.

Edge of Darkness - 5/10

Edge of Darkness is the kind of movie you are rolling your eyes at before leaving the theater. The acting, I will say, was quite good. But the story was largely a litany of unbelievable things: unrealistic police behavior, inexplicable decisions, characters overlooking the most obvious actions or explanations. The movie did capture the tragedy of losing a loved one - but that's taking candy from a baby. Better police/revenge/mystery stories appear every week on television.

If you want a good Mel Gibson revenge film, rent Payback. Or, better, see the Lee Marvin original.