My review of the film Avatar

First of all, let me say - it is as outstanding as I had imagined. The new technique that Cameron has created to capture human emotion in a CGI creature is as good as I have ever seen, especially on the female alien Neytiri. Seeing Sigourney Weaver in her Avatar made me chuckle, as they had absolutely nailed that tight lipped smile that she is famous for. Now all Cameron has to do is create something that will sort out all the other movements of the body, which as usual are as floaty as every other attempt in film . I noticed that of all the creatures/aliens on screen, there weren't any that had fur or hair (except ponytails and weaving), which was probably what had to be done so as not to melt-down the rendering computers. I have only watched one other thing in 3D in the last 20 or so years, which was an underwater documentary at the Imax, but this badly strained my eyes and gave me motion sickness. Although the 3D in this was more subtle, I am still feeling the strain in the back of my eyes as I sit writing this. However, I did feel that because this feature was in 3D, it helped overcome that slightly flat look that CGI usually has on screen.

My fear was that from the trailers that this was going to be yet another excuse for a big budget battle sequence, and that the excuse for doing it was "well this one's in 3D, so it doesn't count". This wasn't the case; although there was the big battle, it didn't happen until the last 30 minutes of the two and half hour film, and was totally justified in keeping with the story line.

It makes no bones about the message it is trying to put across - we are killing our planet and we need to do something about it, but not by finding another habitable planet and doing the same there. It brings into the mix other big topical issues such as terrorism, "we need to fight terror with terror" says the military leader in order to rile his troops; something that I think George Bush said (or words to that effect).

This film is a brilliant way to get out messages such as these - arguably the most anticipated film of the decade, with a huge budget and marketing campaign, directed by the man who made the biggest grossing film of all time - people will flock to see it (old and young), and leave with the images they have seen burned into their psyche.

The film closes with a totally unsympathetic view on how we humans have treated our planet, and I think this is the only way to do it; I remember thinking "good, that'll teach us"!!??

My thoughts on the German film 'The Lives Of Others'

My wife sat and watched it for about 5 minutes, she then gave up and headed into the bedroom because of its slow pace; it never really got any faster. My expectation of this film was that is was going to be an 8-9 out of 10, but I would only give it about 4 because the story was very basic. I say basic because I found I could predict what the next line of dialogue was going to be several times during the running of the film. This film beat ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ at the Academy Awards for the best foreign film picture in 2007, but even though I am one of the few who weren’t impressed with 'Pan's Labyrinth', it was definitely better than ‘The Lives of Others’. Although foreign films have a rawness and edge to them which real movie buffs rave about, I am sorry to say that they are simply not as good as Hollywood films, especially in the writing. Yes Hollywood churns out a load of tosh, which you simply have to sit through to get to the good stuff, but when you do, it beats all foreign films hands down. Basically American writers are the best there are, that coupled with good budgets, a mixture of the best actors and actresses from around the globe, and soundtracks containing Western music (again the best in the world).