Movie reviews: 'Avatar: The Way of the Water' has breathtaking visuals, but too simple a story

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER: 4 STARS

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Kate Winslet, as Ronal, left, and Cliff Curtis, as Tonowari, in a scene from "Avatar: The Way of Water." (20th Century Studios via AP)

“Avatar: The Way of Water” harkens back to a time when Hollywood bigshots thought, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a 3D picture is worth a million words.” The original film, 2009’s “Avatar” was director James Cameron’s grand experiment in the audience’s tolerance for 2 hours 42 minutes of images popping off the screen.

Thirteen years ago, the million words theory worked. “Avatar” was a massive hit, grossing almost 3 billion dollars worldwide, as rumors of a series of sequels hung in the air. Delay after delay kept the blue people off screens for so long, four presidents came and went while Cameron tinkered with the story and the technology to bring his vision to life.

The tinkering is finally over. Cameron returns to theatres with the first of four planned sequels, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” an epic 3D sequel that mixes astonishing visuals with eye-rolling teenagers, a character with the b-movie name Z-Dog and a 3 hour and 12-minute tale of colonialism.

Set on Pandora, an Earth-like habitable extrasolar moon from the Alpha Centauri System populated by the Na’vi, the nine to 10 feet tall Indigenous peoples, the movie picks up the action more than a decade after the events of the first film. Former Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who left his human body behind to permanently become Na'vi, lives on the peaceful planet with wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and children.

Their idyll is interrupted with the return of the Sky People, humans who want to“pacify the hostiles” and takeover Pandora.

“Earth is dying,” says General Frances Ardmore (Edie Falco). “Pandora is the new frontier.”

Despite having been killed off in the original, the Pandora-bound team is led by the ruthless Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a genetically engineered “recombinant” or avatar version of the late Marine, implanted with his mind and emotions. “We have been brought back in the form of our enemy,” he says of he and his team. He plans on taking Pandora at any cost, and getting revenge on Sully, who he sees as a traitor.

Forced into hiding with Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), Ronal (Kate Winslet) and the reef people clan of Metkayina, Sully and his family learn the way of water—"no beginning and no end”—and fight to defend their world.

So, the big question is: Was “Avatar: The Way of Water” worth the wait?

As a technical achievement, yes, unquestionably. The visuals are stunning, particularly in the underwater scenes. Cameron’s camera has a nimbleness often missing in 3D films, which often feel locked-down. His fluid camera roams, on land and sea, capturing some of the most eye-popping, breathtaking scenes of this, or any other, season. Each and every frame is carefully considered, and most could be cut out, framed and hung on the wall to great effect.

The visuals facilitate Cameron’s world building, providing tantalizing views of the forest land of Pandora and the wet ‘n wild world of Metkayina, complete with giant whale-like creatures that could have sprung from the imagination of Ray Harryhausen, and lush, colorful flora and fauna.

It does not look like any other 3D film—even the original “Avatar”—and will engage the eye and stimulate the brain.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the story, which is as simple as the images are complex. Essentially, Cameron continues the colonialization themes of the first film, while adding in mysticism, traditional medicine, poachers and even a nod to Jonah and the Whale.

Most of all, it is a story of family, of parents and children. Apparently, Pandorian kids behave sort of like Earth teens, eye rolls, attitude and all. The family relationships add an intimate element to the epic story, but the visuals often get in the way of the storytelling.

Long action sequences, like a spectacular sea creature attack, take away from the movie’s main thrust, pushing the running time upwards, but not advancing the story. Perhaps they are scheduled in to accommodate bathroom breaks. Whatever the reason, they showcase Cameron’s mastery of the form but often feel spectacular simply for the sake of spectacle.

Loud and proud, “Avatar: The Way of Water” can be, by times, overwhelming, but it’s also the kind of grand scale movie that demands to be seen on the biggest, most immersive screen possible. Cameron shoots for the moon, but goes even further, to a place called Pandora.

BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS: 2 ½ STARS

This image released by Netflix shows Daniel Gimenez Cacho in a scene from "Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths." (Netflix via AP)

“Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” the new Netflix film from Alejandro González Iñárritu, Oscar winning director of “The Revenant” and “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), is for people who didn’t think Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” was self-indulgent enough.

A surreal treatise on the search for purpose in life, “Bardo”—a Buddhist name for the transitional state between death and rebirth—is cut loose of reality, existing in a world where a newborn baby can whisper a request to stay in his mother’s womb because the world is too messed up.

Living in this whimsical world is Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a journalist-turned-documentary-filmmaker just days away from becoming the first Mexican to be awarded a prestigious American journalism accolade. Instead of elation, Silverio develops a bad case of imposter’s syndrome. He anxiously questions everything, from his professional success and Mexican identity, to family trauma and the biggest question of all, what, exactly are we doing here? “Success,” he says, “has been my biggest failure.”

He spends the movie gazing into what seems to be a never-ending navel, one filled with existential crisis and vivid fever dreams.

There are undeniably unforgettable images contained in Iñárritu’s ethereal, dreamlike film. A conversation with conquistador Hernán Cortés, at the top of a pyramid of corpses will sear itself into your corneas and the opening shot, of Silverio’s shadow leapfrogging through a desert, is beautiful and haunting. But as memorable as these sequences are, they feel as if Iñárritu is flexing a muscle, pumping the movie up with beefy visuals that exist simply for the sake of filling the screen, not filling out the storytelling.

The hallucinatory visuals often overwhelm the points Iñárritu attempts to elucidate. He is a master of cinematographic language, but the mix and match of Silverio’s rambling search for meaning with these flamboyant images, adds up to a showy, self-referential film, one that is too much enamored with itself.

Amusingly, Iñárritu seems to understand this. In one long scene a former friend turned television provocateur taunts Silverio, accusing him of being shallow and pretentious. It’s a meta moment, one in which the film’s characters accurately sum up the action happening around them onscreen. It is the most self-aware moment in “Bardo,” a movie that attempts to unearth life’s deeper meaning, but often is too obtuse to move the heart or the spirit.

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER: 3 ½ STARS

This image released by A24 shows Tilda Swinton in a scene from "The Eternal Daughter." (Sandro Kopp/A24 via AP)“The Eternal Daughter,” now playing in theatres, is a gothic ghost story set at a hotel, but don’t check in expecting thrills and chills. This is psychological drama that plays upon the power of memories to create a sense of unease.

Written and directed by Joanna Hogg, the film stars Tilda Swinton in a dual role as screenwriter Julie Hart and her elderly mother Rosalind. Julie is in the early stages of writing a film about her relationship with her mother and has planned a stay at a stately, but remote hotel that once belonged to Rosalind’s aunt, in Wales. In the quiet of the Welsh countryside Julie hopes to mine her mother’s memories for details to enrich her screenplay.

When she was evacuated from London during the Blitz, Rosalind lived at the hotel, then a grand country mansion. Julie questions her about that time, “Were you aware of the war going on?” but Rosalind is reticent to dredge up some of the old memories. She remembers the happy times, but grows heartfelt when evoking the death of her brother, lost in the war during battle over the English Channel.

“You always said you had such happy memories here,” says Julie. “Oh mom, I’m so sorry. I feel so bad for bringing you here.”

“I did have happy memories here,” Rosalind replies, “but I also had other memories here and they’re all still alive.”

Despite her mother’s attempts to placate her, Julie is distraught at the pain she has caused by bringing Rosalind back to her childhood home. “It’s really difficult for me to think of her as being sad,” Julie says.

There is a fuzzy line between fantasy and reality in “The Eternal Daughter.” The old hotel, run by a tetchy front desk clerk (Carly-Sophia Davies), whose passive-aggression brings some humor to the staid situation, creaks in the night and shadows loom in the corners. It is the perfect Gothic breeding ground for Julie’s growing dread and paranoia. Director Hogg takes her time revealing the film’s direction, and whether or not characters, like the groundskeeper Bill (Joseph Mydell) are real or a figment of Julie’s imagination.

It’s not about thrills, it’s about mood. As the two women attempt to connect, to find a way through the memories to a real, tangible place, Hogg creates melodramatic psychological miasma that questions the very proceedings on the screen. There are no easy answers, as Swinton, masterfully playing both mother and daughter, explores the connection between reality, fantasy and memory, but the questions about identity left by the story will linger.

I’M TOTALLY FINE: 3 STARS

Like “Starman,” the 1984 Jeff Bridges movie about an alien who returns to Earth in the form of a heartbroken widow’s late husband, a new film is an out-of-this-world exploration of grief.

In “I’m Totally Fine,” a new dark comedy now on VOD, Jillian Bell plays Vanessa, a young woman struggling to clear her head after the sudden death of her best friend and business partner Jennifer (Natalie Morales).

Alone at the rental home, where she was planning a party to celebrate the success of their shared soft drink company, she is startled when someone—or something—who looks exactly like her late friend turns up in the kitchen. The strange situation becomes even stranger when new Jennifer (Morales) says she is an extraterrestrial, loaded with all of Jennifer memories, sent to Earth for forty-eight hours to study civilization. “Jennifer remains deceased,” says the species observation officer, “I am simply an extraterrestrial who has taken her form.”

Over the next two days, reluctantly at first, Vanessa undergoes tests and begins to understand the meaning of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s words, "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

“I’m Totally Fine” is an undeniably weird odd-couple movie about the power of connection and the importance of letting go.

Bell is understated as she cycles through Vanessa’s stages of grief. “It might be fun to see how unstable I can get,” she says. Her world is inside out, but as alien Jennifer looks on, making notes—"Human has turned anger on herself.”—that actually help Vanessa punch a hole into the melancholy that hangs over her like a veil.

The far showier role belongs to Morales. As a monotone alien who is often bewildered by humanity, her unabashedly odd performance becomes endearing as she becomes the catapult for Vanessa’s catharsis. It’s a trick to find the balance between quirky and compassion, and Morales nails it.

Despite its odd story, “I’m Totally Fine” doesn’t go anywhere you don’t see coming, but the performances bring some real humanity to the alien premise.