Cameron is an easy guy to hate; his hubris — perhaps the only one in the world that can literally be described as “Titanic”; his pronouncements about the future of cinema; his preference to be seen as an obsessive world-builder and not a movie director; that horrible scene in True Lies. And the hype about Avatar was pretty nauseous.

But the stuff I was expecting to hate wasn’t as bletcherous as expected; the stuff I knew I was going to have to endure didn’t last as long as I feared; and the visuals and Cameron’s direction of same were absolutely extraordinary. I have not enjoyed 3D in the past, and tend to think of it as less the next phase of evolution in cinema as a cynical and desparate attempt by the studios to combat piracy and lure the public back into the theaters. Also, the eye doctor cabal.

But the 3D in Avatar is well executed as in no 3D movie I’ve seen so far; there aren’t many STABBY SPEARS or GIANT FLIGHTS OF ARROWS or YAWNING CHASMS; it’s just another brush that Cameron uses to paint his pictures with. In that sense, yes, I suppose Avatar is the future of cinema, but it’s simultaneously less irritating to me and of less import to Cameron than expected.

The plot is a shambles; the movie could not possibly wear it’s Democratic Party fundraiser politics any more obviously on its sleeve — the treatment of the military reminds one of nothing so much as John Kerry’s tooth-grinding speech accepting the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination; the dialog is eye-wateringly dumb when it’s not NARRATED BY CAPTAIN EXPOSITION. It’s certainly less ethically compromised than Dances With Wolves or The Last Samurai, but it shares to some degree in their frankly racist belief in the power of ONE WHITE MAN to save an ancient culture by becoming a hybrid, superior in all respects, learning in two weeks everything they know and then leading them into battle.

But Cameron has always been very good on gender politics (the female characters are all strong and relatively interesting, with the emphasis on “relatively”), and the movie is, for being eleventeen hours long, remarkably well paced. Giovanni Ribisi plays Paul Reiser reasonably well; Stephen Lang makes a great villain; it’s got Sigourney Weaver in it and she climbs out of a pod in her underwear!

But enough said about the people. The visualization of Pandora is where it’s at, and is honestly the only reason to see the movie. Therefore, I am happy to report that it is astonishing. The Massive stuff (Weta Digital’s crowd software) is used to great effect; the new motion capture techniques, improved since Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy II, are impressive in helping to bridge the Uncanny Valley, albeit trading a real advance in facial expressiveness for a more limited physicality, although that could be just that Sam Worthington is no Doug Jones.

The world as envisioned is convincing enough, although there’s a bunch of stuff that irritated the ecology nerd in me. While the look of the flora and fauna is well-integrated, and there’s nothing too terribly jarring, I was not impressed by the idea that everything has six limbs except the people. I question the ability of a huge herbivore horse creature to derive enough energy to carry a twelve foot tall humanoid at 30mph from drinking nectar. Even in low-grav the flight seems improbable. Some stuff is too solid seeming for being low-grav (giant flower rhinos?); and yet, the low-grav effects aren’t explored where they might be interesting (the humans are just as weaksauce when faced with alien monsters as on LV-426, for instance). And what’s Cameron’s obsession with waldos, anyway? But never mind. I’m a nerd.

When it comes right down to it, it’s a movie that ends with a giant set-piece of dinosaurs fighting helicopters. My 38 year old self surrendered to my 12 year old self and just sat back, grinning.

Highly recommended; sure, it’s a different movie than The Man Without A Past or The Eel but so what? A man ought not live by esoteric foreign fare alone.

Pretty stock stuff, but well executed, as one would expect from Raimi. Alison Lohman is a very appealing protagonist; the plot is nicely put together, ad the ending is great, although telegraphed pretty obviously.

People have said it’s a “return to form”, but I would argue Raimi’s style has been evolving pretty consistently, big-budget spectaculars or no. Certainly nothing in “Drag Me To Hell” would have been out of place in “Evil Dead” or “Darkman”, but you can say that about a lot of “Spiderman”, too.

It’s also nice and short, always a positive. Rent it if you like Sam Raimi pictures, or reasonably gruey spooky supernatural tales of horror.

It’s stylishly put together and reasonably compelling, at least so far. There are some striking visuals, and the lead (Clovis Cornillac) has a nice physicality to him. The plot is not particularly crystalline, but the limited color and light palette and particularly the sound design lend the movie a nice distinctive aesthetic. Being French, there is also a dash of nudity, and a distressing sex scene that is hard to parse.

The overwhelming aesthetic is that of a survival horror video game. But it’s not bad. I’d recommend a rental if you like strange non-Hollywood sci-fi.

I don’t share my favorite movie critic’s fear and loathing of Guy Ritchie (hey, I liked Snatch well enough), but I was concerned about this one. I’m no Holmesian or whatever the hell they call themselves, so fidelity to source material wasn’t particularly important to me (although is there really so much single-stick in the stories?), and I quite like Robert Downey Jr.

The problems going in for me were Jude Law, who can be as dead a fish as ever flopped onto the screen; the slow-mo stuff in the trailer; and the constant quippery. Happily, Law was excellent — he played the respectable Army doctor straight, but with a wonderful sense of timing with the down-market Robert Downey; the slow-mo stuff actually is a useful cinematic device; and the relationship between Holmes and Watson is so well acted and developed that the quippery works.

I would have cut McAdams, whose character appears to be only there to reassure us that Holmes is straight, and it goes on a bit too long, but the balance between comedy and action is well handled, Eddie Marsen and Mark Strong are both great, and the evocation of the time and place is very well done. They’ve also set up the whole business for a sequel in the most obvious way possible; cut the McAdams and about 25 minutes, and it could be fantastic.

Until then, I highly recommend it.

So Uncharted 2. What to make of it. Let’s get the positives out of the way first. The visuals and particularly the environments are very well put together; it’s not simply that they’re lovely, or large and reasonable immersive, but that there’s a clear and strongly stated aesthetic at work. The art direction is superb. This extends to the audio, which is consistently excellent — ambient noises are appropriate to the story, and are well executed. The game itself does have a quality of immersion that I felt missing from the first one; I found myself surrendering to the game world more often than usual.

Even the voice acting was well done; well varied and competently executed. The game is a third person shooter with some agreeably minor platforming elements. That’s fine, as the genre conventions are adhered to none too slavishly. I also found it fairly easy, meaning that there were few punitive dick-waving IN YOUR FACE sequences designed to frustrate the more causal gamer. It also resists the plague of “open-world” non-sense; it is nicely linear and progressive, meaning that you are never at a loss as what to do next. This is becoming increasingly important to me as I realize that the world of games is splitting into those designed as social media — the online-only titles like Halo; those meant to express underlying OCD by introducing unholy quantities of programmatically generated “content” to appeal to the completists and autistics who chase achievements; and those games that have a narrative focus and try to involve the player in a non-coercive guided experience towards a conventional narrative resolution. I throw my lot in largely with the latter, although all games can bring pleasure.

But the unquestioned progress made by Naughty Dog in squeezing high-quality visuals from their engine has released them from the bounds of a healthy, natural humility, and the cutscenes are an unmitigitated horrorshow. You have never been down in the bottom of so uncanny a valley. It is horrible and makes me hate hate hate hate hate all of the characters with a kind of wild Bacchanalian frenzy. I want to see them torn to pieces by a horde of wine-crazed Maenads. I want to see their rubbery greasy faces melted off by the Arc of the motherfucking Covenant. I want in short the ability to play the game completely through in the over-the-shoulder third-person.

The story is also mediocre. You hit some excellent set pieces, and some beautiful environments, but the whole is much less than the sum of the parts. The connections between set pieces is thin, and the overall story is too baroque to not distract. It’s hardly terrible, and I give Naughty Dog considerable props for not resorting to standard video game puerility; think of the movie it could be made into as a bad straight-to-DVD sequel to National Treasure 2.

I would also venture that the control system could stand to learn from Gears Of War, which retains the state of the art in the over-the-shoulder gameplay, and the camera still makes bad decisions, leading to the Long Walk more often than one would like. I may be just being nostalgic, but I seem to remember that this problem has been solved. Why the continued trouble, video game companies?

This is not to run the game down; it’s excellent, if derivative stuff, and I would recommend it as a mild purchase/strong rental. Naughty Dog’s commitment to cinematics is to be admired, if not commended, and currently, there’s nobody doing a better job at aping cinema.

Recommended, but it makes no waves. It is no closer to a new aesthetic than Doom III, albeit much better executed. If you’re looking for a predictable, bland gaming experience that will not even attempt to stretch the boundaries of what video games are, this is as good a choice as you will find.

Very, very good. Slightly longer than necessary, but a great central performance from Damon; good work from Bakula and Joel McHale; and, of course, the gripping real life story of international conspiratorial lysine price fixing! Be still, my beating heart!

Also of note is the slightly anachronistic music by Marvin Hamlisch, which was slightly disorientating, in a good way. I have to admit that I generally prefer the conventional Hollywood style work that Soderbergh does (The Limey, Out Of Sight, Erin Brockovich) to his more obtuse efforts (Solaris, Che, Bubble).

So far, it’s great; for all the humor, they’re taking the goofy metal aesthetic at face value — sure, it’s dumb, but it’s also epic, a combination well understood by c.f. Mastodon, or Judas Priest; but one that leaves the Mission hipster ironist largely unmanned, without a wink-wink nudge-nudge surface to grasp on and sneer off of.

The game mechanic is a little USPS for my tastes, with mild pursuit of R. Jack Black actually lends some character to the big budget voice acting, which is rare and welcome. The overworld is a bit dry. Haven’t found many “side quests” yet. Still largely unconvinced by the genre of “open world” games, which worlds tend to be cramped small and boring. More direction in a better crafted experiential environment, please (see, Mass Effect vs. Bioshock, for an example.)

Overall, though, it’s pretty enjoyable in the three or so hours I’ve farted around. Almost no penalty for dying, which is good because the car controls are pretty much just pants.

More later, but it’s a welcome surprise.

Boyko turned me on to these fine Canadian fellows, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. There’s sort of a flirtation with Gravity Records at their least irritating. Happily there are also odd little excursions from what you expect; unexpected little spandrels of melody pop up in the course of 18 minutes of brutality. But make no mistake, this is hardcore punk rock in the 90’s American vein, owing more to Victory records than maybe say Matador.

Worth every penny, especially The Chemistry of Common Life, which I am quite enjoying. Rock on, Canada.

We walked into this little gem with basically no expectations. It turned out to be excellent, much funnier and more gruey than I had expected. Horror comedy seems like a particularly difficult combination to get right, but I felt that Zombieland struck pretty much the right tone. Also much in its favor is an 81 minute running time. Not a lot of fat to be cut out of this one.

My only concern is that Jesse Eisenberg will end up typecast in -land movies; he was great in this, and really great in Adventureland, but I’m not sure how many more mopey over-educated Jews he needs to play in movies that take place in theme parks.

With that caveat: Highly recommended.

I liked this rather a lot; it’s a good natured documentary about some Canadian metal lifers who were reasonably big in the early ‘80s and have, in defiance of God and man, continued to make mediocre metal records for thirty years while living the lives of decent working-class Canadians.

I was struck by a resemblance to Some Kind Of Monster; the dynamic between Lips and Robb Reiner (Anvil) was much the same as that between Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield; except that whereas the latter live the life of the untrammeled Id; the Anvil guys are basically just a couple of Canadians. They don’t have the corporate structure that gives Ulrich and Hetfield a scaffolding in which they can freely be abusive to each other. Lips and Robb just have to sort of figure it out like any two friends.

This was excellent, if a little light-weight. Much of the movie is constructed around the narratives of This Is Spinal Tap, and the haplessness of the band probably overstated to some degree. It’s forgettable, but I admit I misted up a bit during “Metal On Metal” in front of 2500 dutifully excited Japanese.

Recommended.