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Welcome to the Agglomeration

For easily bamboozled readers, that title is to be interpreted "First of Reviews in 2010", and not "First of Two Thousand and Ten Reviews" because there is no way I'm going to commit myself to such a gargantuan workload that would take most people their entire career, not that this even is a job that I can spend every day doing just for the sake of it especially when I lack the motivation to type up the next few parts of the Transcriber even though I pretty much have figured out where I want to take the story from where I left off in Part 12 (yeah I realise this is a tangent but I sort of dug myself into a hole by writing Part 12 and then deciding two days after that I didn't like the original ending I had planned like since the original conception of the idea so I had to find a way to reconcile what I had written with a new ending that I liked). However that said, I will occasionally try to get back into reviewing movies (I can't do TV show episodes because a) people don't watch the shows I do and b) see commitment issue above) and so this is the first of said reviews in the year 2010. Glad I clarified that, otherwise things could've gotten confusing.

Before I go in the review however, I would like to announce my favourite movie of 2009. Again some clarification of the criteria is necessary - this award goes to my favourite film seen in 2009, and does not necessarily have to have been made in 2009. The winner would come as no surprise to my closest friends who have had to deal with me raving about and spamming our conversations with youtube links from this film for the entire year after I saw it.

My favourite movie seen in 2009 was indeed: A Scanner Darkly

Now onto the review, hopefully this year will be more hotly contested than last year because honestly I didn't really see any other films that gave this a very great challenge to the extent I had to flip a coin to pick one over the other or something although I will admit, second place and third place were fairly close. Guesses as to which films they may have been can be made in the comments section.

2010 Movie Review #1 - Avatar

Yeah. I know. You're probably either thinking (depending on who you are):

a) Mainstream piece of braincell-implosion-inducing psychotic dog bone (if you're weird)

b) That was made in 2009. Why are you including in your 2010 Movie Reviews? (if you don't bother reading my incredibly long-winded tangents that I post earlier)

c) Aha! It wasn't really a tangent if you knew that was going to be relevant later was it? It was merely clever foreshadowing! (IB Commentary peeps)

d) 0/10 for Alien Sex (Ngiam)

e) I just blogged about this, it can't be coincedence that you're reviewing it now (Ngiam)

f) Other (Oil)

Regardless of which of the above you fall in (+10 points if you get my 'Other' reference although it just shows that I've gotten to you with my youtube link spam) I watched Avatar on the 17th of January with my parents (yeah all my friends had either already seen it, didn't want to watch a movie with me or was too infuriated with alien sex after Mass Effect to give this movie a try) in a small mostly-filled Hurstville Event Cinema. (Tangent - I hate the name Event Cinemas. Change it back to Greater Union please). I wasn't originally planning to watch Avatar I must say, but mostly good reviews from friends as well as the fact that there wasn't really anything else worth watching at the time meant that I had to alter my original plan, flexible and open-minded cynic that I am.

Since Hurstville didn't offer the film in 2D and we couldn't go to IMAX for the 'ultimate 3D experience' because session times were booked out for the week and a half, we had to settle with the 3D version of Avatar on a much smaller screen. This meant a few problems inherent within the 3D process that aren't the fault of the film. Firstly, I had to put my 3D glasses on top of my original glasses, because that they didn't not cover my entire range of vision as well as they should have and the entire film I should see blotches of non-3D blurs in my peripheral vision. Also I had the temptation every scene to lift off my 3D glasses just to see *what it was like in 2D'. Finally the guy next to me just simply could not risk damaging his mental strengthening program of cognitive spacial awareness as he checked his cell phone for the time every 5 or 10 minutes. He's the sort of person that you would expect not to be an inductivist turkey. Good on him. Minor quips about the viewing experience aside, let's get onto my thoughts about the film.

I'm not going to bother about plot because if you're reading this, I'm going to assume you've seen it - mainstream high-grossing film that it is - and so I can spare Ngiam the stomach-rupture-inducing agony of having to contemplate alien sex -- ah damn it!

The reason I'm not going to mention plot is because there's nothing that hasn't been done before. Other reviews have made references to 'Dances with Wolves', personally I saw 'The Last Samurai' allusions but that doesn't matter. In something like this you essentially know what each 'twist' or 'surprise' is meant to be and for the sake of full circle or tight structure, I figured out exactly how the movie's climax and ending would pretty much present itself. None of that bothered me because I wasn't watching that kind of film. Instead the power of the narrative lies in James Cameron's directing, and the feeling of epic proportions that he tried to create. The biggest trap with creating an alien species is that they look fake or subpar, but in Avatar, the Na'vi and Pandora look exceptional and the attention to detail in the environment, especially in the night scenes, are wonderful to behold. The action scenes are also extremely impressive, (Think Knowing but better, with a much better plot, and no Nicolas Cage - yes indeed this Ngiam-invented scale lives on) and the entire film was a marvellous visual spectacle.

My first reaction when I saw that the movie would run for 2 hours and 47 minutes was that there would definitely be exposition material that could've been cut. And even while watching I remember thinking to myself the first half - setting up the story - was slightly too slowly-paced but once the conflict between the 'Sky People' and the Na'vi began, the film was terrific. A scene in particular I thought was unnecessary were the introduction of the two creatures which attacked Jake and forced him away from his party, but when they banded together in the final confrontation, the link was made and it felt much less out of place. That said, I still think the earlier half of the film could be shortened somehow although the adaptation of Jake as an Avatar into the Na'vi tribe was very well done.

The acting was mostly quite strong across the board. My favourite actor was Stephen Lang who portrayed the main antagonist of the film, but I enjoyed Sam Worthington and Michelle Rodriguez's performances as well, whilst everyone else was solid. The score for the film in the more action-packed sequences seemed to fit better for me than in the quiet more poignant and emotional scenes. Maybe that's just me, I have weird tastes in music after all.

Overall, I enjoyed seeing Avatar. It was a new and fresh experience and visually it was stunning. Would it remain in my favourite films of the year? Only time will tell. But as of now, due to the process of elimination, Avatar is my favourite film seen in 2010. Go figure.

7.5/10

Till next time, may you agglomerate all your unpremeditated contemplations.