When movies as big as Avatar The Way of Water arrive, most of the others get out of the way. Very little else opens this week and you can expect another big hit for James Cameron, the Titanic, Terminator and Aliens man. The anticipation has been huge and long for this one.
Meanwhile, a small Canadian film about a legendary Canadian rock festival, Revival 69, is one to look out for. It's just arrived in only a few theatres but really informs and entertains.
And on the streamers, these are new. Bardo, the personal memoir by Mexcican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu is on Netflix and Paramount+ has a remake that your kids might enjoy. Snow Day was an unlikely hit back in 2000. But it had Chevy Chase. This one doesn't. I'll get to it if I have time.
I do review these:
Avatar: The Way of Water: 3½ stars
Revival 69: The Concert that Rocked the World: 4 stars
Snow Day: 2
AVATAR THE WAY OF WATER: We've been waiting 13 years for this sequel to the most successful film of all time. And the quick answer to was it worth waiting is this: you get more of the same, much more, but still not enough character building and human connection which were thin in the original. You do get James Cameron, the director's environmental message again—take care of the earth. He has it in or alongside everything you see but doesn't force it on you.
Once again it's a giant spectacle of a movie. The people on the planet Pandora, called the Na'vi, live in harmony with the natural world, the forests in their case. The Sky People as they call them arrive in spaceships, burn some of their trees and try to take the land. They need a place for humans to live because Earth is becoming uninhabitable. Their commander (Stephen Lang) is also on something of a revenge trip looking for a defector, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) who is living with his Na'vi wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and their children. He's said to now be the leader of the “Na'vi insurgency.
Since he's become such a target he moves his family to another part of the planet, to where the water people live. Their society is completely connected to the oceans, a main interest of Cameron's as he showed in Titanic and in The Abyss.The water people ride creatures that look like porpoises and sea birds. They can exist underwater for long stretches. They can communicate with a sentient whale, an odd plot point that leads to a quite touching incident. They're led by a chief (Cliff Curtis) and his wife (an almost unrecognizable Kate Winslet) who don't really welcome them. “Don't bring your war to us,” the chief says. But, of course, it does arrive, in a speedy war boat.
The film is over three hours long. There's much more here and too many details to write about. Sully is an avatar; the Colonel is back even though he died last film. His consciousness was transferred to an avatar.
His men are all diguised as Na'vi to enable the mission. Sully and his wife have adopted a teenage daughter (played by Sigourney Weaver) who is the daughter of a woman who is also played by Weaver. Oddities like that appear all over in this complex script. Focus on the central story though and the stunning action sequences and enjoy the beautiful world building by the film's designers and the 3D that brings it alive without gimmicks and you'll be OK. The story is unexceptional, the characters are thin but that visuals are awesome. (In theaters everywhere. See it in IMAX if you can) 3 ½ out of 5
REVIVAL 69: This film is over-hyped and doesn't need to be. It's a very good recall of a terrific rock and roll show and tells the very dramatic story behind it. How it came about and how a hail Mary last chance saved it from collapse. But “the concert that rocked the world” or the “the second most important event in rock & roll history”? Feels like a stretch to me, and I was there.
It was a one-day rock festival at Varsity Stadium in Toronto the year of Woodstock and Altamont. It featured some of the originals (Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent), a few new bands (Chicago, The Doors—already controversial—and Alice Cooper—still unknown) and one superstar. It was “jaw dropping” says Geddy Lee in the film. The frontman of Rush was in the crowd high on LSD. “One of the best rock shows I've ever seen” says Robbie Krieger, of The Doors. Film clips back up what they say. The performances were inspired that day.
And one was historic.
Ticket sales had been slow. The promoters were told to cancel but somebody got the idea to invite John Lennon to come over from England and perform. It was only two days before the show and several people involved recall how they contacted him, convinced him and shut down the disbelievers. The timing was perfect. Lennon was easing his way out of the Beatles towards becoming a solo artist. The Revival seemed a good step forward. He called up Eric Clapton and two others, they rehearsed a few songs on the plane and played the first-ever show by The Plastic Ono Band. And Yoko Ono sang a solo (wailed is more like it) for over 17 minutes. Somebody in the film says it was an artistic expression about war. We didn't understand it that way and it was about an hour before the final act of the night, The Doors, came on. They probably didn't want to follow that too closely.
In our group it prompted the immortal line: “This is longer than Janet's turn at Scrabble.” That spirit of fun was there all day and the film pefectly reflects that through the recollections and the music. It's listed as a British Columbia-Ontario co-production because that where the two companies behind it are based. Ron Chapman of Toronto directed it. (In theaters starting now (Hamilton, Waterloo), tomorrow (Toronto) or Sunday (Ottawa and Vancouver) 4 out of 5
SNOW DAY: Here's a bit of harmless but trivial winter entertainment for your kids. It's a re-make of a 2000 film that didn't delight the critics but did become popular. The co-writer is back and co-writes this one too. The plot differs in a few ways. This one seems to be much more kid-centered in the three stories it offers. It has snowed overnight in Syracuse, the schools are closed and it's that fabled snow day that some dream of. One girl wants to engineer a second snow day so she goes looking for the snowplough driver to foil his work. A teen boy pines for one of the cool girls at school and tries to connect with her. Her boyfriend isn't pleased about that but he's vulnerable. He knows little about his girlfriend, not even that she doesn't like pickles. He can be tricked. Two parents are trying cook the best pancakes for their daughter. No it doesn't fit in but adds to a family dynamic that would have fit in a TV sitcom years ago.
The snowplough driver is diverted, crashes his truck into a snowbank and sinks it in a pond. A lot of kids would love these highjinks. One in here is particularly precocious, in a far-too Holywood way. And there are songs. Characters dance as they sing, in the street, in school and on a field of snow. The songs are so so but one, by the snowplough driver ( Jerry Trainor), about how much he hates kids, has a nice bite to it. The film, directed by Michael Lembeck, is perky and sweet and at 71 minutes, short. It was filmed in Montreal so there's a sprinkling of Canadian actors in the cast. (Paramount+) 2 out of 5
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