So now there are no more big, unseen films. And that means it’s time to tackle a few more questions: Is “Avatar” is good as everybody says? Is “Nine” another “Chicago” (i.e., a multiple Oscar winner in the big categories) or another “Dreamgirls” (i.e., shut out of the Best Picture race)? Could “It’s Complicated” sneak into the race? Is Guy Ritchie serious with his “Sherlock Holmes” remake?
Answers below.
“Avatar”
Verdict: Spectacular. Silly. Groundbreaking. Cringe-inducing. Magical. Clunky. Kickass. Avatariffic. But in what order?
James Cameron’s sci-fi epic is indeed a remarkable film, a gloriously outsized and immersive experience that creates a richly detailed new world and then sells it for two and a half hours of action and allegory. It’s “Dances with Wolves” meets “The Matrix” – the guy who lives in an alien culture and learns to love and fight for it – and, over and over, it shows you things you’ve never seen and takes the technology of film to a new level. I found the “floating mountains” of the planet Pandora particularly staggering, but you’ll probably have your own list of mind-bogglers.
That said, Cameron still has trouble with (or maybe just no interest in) writing a script that isn’t riddled with action-movie clichés, risible villains and ham-fisted foreshadowings. And while the movie’s indigenous species, the Na’vi, are convincingly rendered, after a while the whole thing starts to feel like the biggest, grandest, most spectacular animated film ever made, rather than like a flesh-and-blood experience.
I was swept up in “Avatar” and often engrossed in it, and I’d see it again in a second. But it didn’t connect with me emotionally, or persuade me to abandon my feeling that the smartest money Cameron could spend is not on better effects, but on a top-notch screenwriter. Here’s the most impressive thing about James Cameron: he’s so talented that he can overcome the fact that his scripts are written by James Cameron.
Oscar chances: Best Picture? Of course. Best Director? Yes. Acting? Nope. Screenplay? No way. Music? I hope not, but probably. The craft categories? Nominations by the truckload.
And can it win the top prize? Maybe, if the boxoffice returns boost it into the realm of a true phenomenon, which they might well do. But I suspect that the older contingent among Oscar voters (in other words, most of them) will resist a sci-fi action film that looks like the world’s most spectacular cartoon. I expect it to be a major player, and to take home several Oscars, but for now I don’t see it landing the big one, particularly in a year in which the new way of tallying Best Picture votes will be looking for consensus rather than passion.
“Nine”
Verdict: Well, now we know one thing that Daniel Day-Lewis can’t do: sing. He doesn’t have to for most of “Nine,” though; with the Oscar-winner as a depressed, philandering Italian film director struggling to get his next film off the ground, the musical reinvention of Fellini’s “8 ½” depends far less on the pipes of its leading man than on the lavish production design, the dazzling choreography, the spectacular cinematography and the lingerie with which the female cast is bedecked.
