Avatar | A

director: James Cameron
starring: Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel Moore

avatarDirector James Cameron’s long-awaited and heavily-hyped return to the big screen finally arrives in a dizzying tour-de-force of special effects and storytelling mastery. While the script doesn’t quite live up to the visuals, Avatar is a singular moviegoing experience – one that will serve as a milestone in film experience history. The film does indeed live up to the hype on a visual level. In fact, it succeeds on such a scale as to almost completely overwhelm the comparatively lightweight script and cliched characters, flaws that might stick in your mind after you’ve come down from the high of the in-theater experience.

On more than one occasion, I found myself comparing Avatar to Cameron’s 1986 masterpiece (as far as I’m concerned), Aliens. In fact, I tend to compare quite a few movies to Aliens each year (one example), likely because its original formula has been copied so many times since, with varying degrees of success. And while a story featuring a tribe of blue-skinned aliens trying to protect some sacred trees doesn’t quite echo “space marines fighting against a horde of terrifying, slimy aliens,” the key points are all worth comparing.

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204b/365 (Bonus)

I just had to throw in another picture for the 19th. Does anyone really want their house smelling like leaves? And lest you think the scent of these candles will remind you of brisk fall days spent enjoying nature’s wonder as the leaves turn, the candles smelled more like the pile of wet, rotting leaves you’ve left on the side of the road for trash pick-up. Enjoy!

204b of 365
204b of 365