Posts Tagged ‘Sam Worthington’

Avatar: The Way of Water

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Stephen Lang, Jack Champion, Cliff Curtis, Edie Falco, CCH Pounder

Running Time: 3 hours and 12 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

This film is only available in cinemas – please support cinemas

After a 13 year absence, director James Cameron returns with the highly anticipated sequel to the 2009 smash hit Avatar which is a mix up of the first film, with directorial flourishes from his earlier films including the Oscar winning Titanic and 1989’s The Abyss. Avatar: The Way of Water follows the Na’vi race to protect Pandora from the Sky People commonly known as humanity who have come to colonize Pandora as earth is becoming increasingly uninhabitable.

This epic fantasy adventure is over 3 hours long and can be viewed as a family orientated cinematic opera with a clear 3 act partition. The narrative focuses on Jake Sully and his family as they leave the rainforests and escape to the water people, Metkayina reef people headed up by TonoWari played by New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis (Once Were Warriors) and his wife Ronal played by Oscar winner Kate Winslet (The Reader) who reteams with James Cameron after the critical success of Titanic.

Act 1 of Avatar: The Way of the Water is establishing the family dynamics of Jake Sully and his wife Neytiri played by Zoe Saldana and their four children: two boys and two girls as they live blissfully in the lush rain forests of Pandora. Act 2 follows the family’s departure to the water people following an imminent threat by Quaritch played by Stephen Lang, a human space commando that has become an Avatar to track down Jake Sully and then Act 3 is the most spectacular as there are the Aqua Wars.

It is really in the critical scenes of Act 3 that director James Cameron excels as the gorgeous water scenes are extraordinary. However soon the water people and the ocean species are threatened by the arrival of Quaritch with humans, ammunition and extremely advanced technology which destabilizes the delicate balance of life that the Water people, wisely governed by TonoWari has fought so hard to maintain. The water sequences in Act 2 and 3 are truly phenomenal: dazzling and visually beautiful. For that reason alone it is worth seeing Avatar: The Way of Water. The second reason, besides the cutting edge visual effects, is the extraordinary production design, not only in scale but in imagination and interpretation.

The story of Avatar: The Way of Water could be an allegory for conservation, the climate crisis and rapid urbanisation. It could also be an allegorical tale about the colonizer trying to conquer the colonised to the point of extinction. Both allegorical reference points remain relevant and contemporary.

Visually lavish, Avatar: The Way of Water is truly amazing to behold, a vast and glimmering spectacle of oceanic wars, threatened species and unbelievable technology.

Avatar: The Way of Water gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and should win an Oscar for Best Visual effects. It is a very long film, but highly recommended viewing, not so much for the storyline but for the cinematic spectacle.

Hacksaw Ridge

Director: Mel Gibson

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Luke Bracey, Sam Worthington, Rachel Griffiths, Hugo Weaving, Vince Vaughn, Milo Gibson, Ben O’Toole

Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ director Mel Gibson has assembled a mostly Australian cast in the World War II drama Hacksaw Ridge about the Virginia conscientious objector Desmond Doss who refused to bear arms during the war against the Japanese. Doss is played by Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) in one of his best acting roles yet.

Hacksaw Ridge opens in The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in the early 1930’s where young Doss and his brother are constantly engaged in fraternal rivalry while their drunken father Tom played by Hugo Weaving (The Dressmaker) mourns the loss of his friends in the Great War and beats their mother Bertha played by Rachel Griffiths (Muriel’s Wedding).

As a practicing Seventh Day Adventist, Desmond from a young age takes a vow against violence yet is compelled to join the army soon after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour. His romantic life is heightened when he meets Nurse Dorothy Schutte, a wonderful supporting role played by the gorgeous Teresa Palmer (Point Break, I am Number Four) which he soon proposes to.

While the first act of Hacksaw Ridge is taken up with establishing a credible back story of Desmond Doss, his religious beliefs, family and brief courtship, it’s really the second act of the film that captures audience’s attention as Doss undergoes basic military training under the supervision of Sgt Howell played by Vince Vaughn (Into The Wild, The Internship) and Captain Glover played by British actor Sam Worthington (Avatar, Clash of the Titans).

When it comes to target practice, the rest of the soldiers including a handsome Smitty Ryker played by Luke Bracey (The November Man) and Lucky Ford played by Gibson’s son Milo Gibson are all eager to take up arms to defend their country, while Doss completely refuses to hold a rifle on the grounds that he is a conscientious objector.

After a military inquiry into whether Doss can still serve in the armed forces without bearing arms, the action swiftly moves into the third act, the dreaded battle sequence at Hacksaw Ridge, on the island of Okinawa, a battle so gruesome that many of his fellow soldiers are killed instantly as the ruthless Japanese attack the Americans without restraint.

Director Gibson excels in the battle sequences of Hacksaw Ridge as a combination of frenetic sound editing, utter brutality and emotional tension is vividly captured as the soldier bravely battle a more sophisticated and disciplined opponent. As the battle for Hacksaw Ridge continues, many American soldiers are left wounded, easy prey for the bayonets of the Japanese soldiers.

Doss in this terrifying battleground questions his own convictions and has a crisis of faith amidst bullets whizzing past him and bodies rotting in shallow graves.

Hacksaw Ridge was indeed a vicious battle of attrition, but Doss realizes that if he can save as many wounded American soldiers as possible then perhaps the American military might recognize his true valour and bravery.

In terms of recreating one of the most gruesome battles of the Pacific Theatre of World War II, Hacksaw Ridge is an excellent film comparable to similar war classics like Steven Spielberg’s Oscar winning Saving Private Ryan and Oliver Stone’s Platoon.

Historically accurate, Hacksaw Ridge superbly retells the unbelievable story of Desmond Doss, the first Conscientious Objector who was in a battle and received the Medal of Honour without firing a single shot. This is highly recommended viewing and judging by its critical claim, Hacksaw Ridge will have a cult following for lovers of genuine war films.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss

Avatar

James Cameron much anticipated Avatar is a simulacrum of CGI images which will dazzle the viewers but leave any intelligent probing of colonialism in a virtual capacity as a hollow fantasy without any true substance, leaving the human characters to languish in a wilderness of special effects without a thread of credibility…. there again – it is billed as a fantasy epic – a strange mixture of Ferngully on Acid mixed with GI Joe Transformers – where are those corporates digging for precious metals?

Too little of such great talents as Sigourney Weaver and Giovanni Ribisi are used purposefully onscreen while Sam Worthington’s avatar is as solid as it is imaginary, as two dimensional as the proverbial battle between the indigenous popultion, the Na’vi and the humans which seek to destroy and colonize Pandora

First half is stunning but once Pandora ‘s delights are discovered, it all goes South from there and the machines bring destruction and a new dawn…

Irony of the film is that the earth-loving Pandoreans would never have been created ten years ago without the 21st Century digital technology….

Blade Runner, Babylon AD and Chronicles of Riddick do far better in the originality arena… held up by the bastions of Science Fiction Star Wars and the recent brilliant Star Trek.

Return of the Hairy Man: Wolverine, Terminator Salvation and Zack and Miri make a Porno…

So in these time of global economic gloom, a clean-shaven, metrosexual is not your saviour. Besides all these good-looking, well-dressed beautifully groomed corporate types were the ones lending money out to those hapless citizens who were fiscally irresponsible. Investing in outlandish off-shores accounts, allowing an international unregulated banking system to flourish in a world where credit was supreme, and sensibilities had gone out the window. In the times of a crisis, strong hairy men are here to save the world!

That’s if the batch of summer blockbuster action and comedy films is anything to go from the archetypal X-Men Origins: Wolverine directed by South African Gavin Hood to the hilariously off the coffee counter, Zack and Miri make a Porno. Whether the world has come to a sticky and apocalyptic end in the monochromatic world of Terminator Salvation, with an unshaven Christian Bale as John Connor, all grown up and ready to take on Skynet or audiences discover the real origins of the gorgeously sexy hairy beast of a man, well, mutant, Wolverine who along with a band of fellow unshaven mutants is out to wreck havoc on an suspecting America, the truth be told that clearly the Hairy Man has returned!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a fantastic action film appealing to the younger testosterone filled male generation, which tells of how Wolverine and his brother Sabretooth, an equally hairy and deadly character played with sinister panache by Liev Schreiber fight each other, the world and all those in between, including every major world war from the Napoleonic era to Vietnam. Even the normally clean-shaven Canadian actor, Ryan Reynolds is quite revealing in his role as Wade Wilson but then let’s not discount that Reynolds did appear in the Blade Trilogy.

Terminator Salvation paints a grim and grimy picture of a post-nuclear blasted world where the Skynet controlled Robots have wrecked havoc on America with the cities resembling industrial junkyards from hell. Christian Bale returns in another blockbuster but here again, as in the far superior The Dark Knight, it is his co-star that steals the shows. The Dark Knight, such a brilliant film of anarchy reigning supreme featured the flawlessly demented performance of the late Heath Ledger as the Joker and now in Terminator Salvation it is the more subtle less frenetic performance of Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright who is propelled into a future abyss only to discover redemption is beyond his electronic grip…

On a lighter note, and much more grounded in the present day recession-laden America is Kevin Smith’s fantastically funny and very raunchy film Zack and Miri make a Porno, about a couple of loser flat mates in Pittsburgh that realize that the financial crisis calls for more drastic measures. Seth Rogen saves the film as the unsexy but very hairy, Zack next to the gorgeous demurely (I kid you not) Miri, played by Elizabeth Banks. Rogen plays every type of hairy anti-hero with such effortless wit and perfect comic timing, who manages to save his reputation, make some underground cash and with the help of an extra-terrestrial cast make a Porno! Watch out for superb cameos by Brandon Routh (from Superman fame) and the delightful Justin Long at Zack and Miri’s reunion…

Although all three films are vastly different, it denotes a new fashion of fury heroes ready to save us from the grim realities of the strange 21^st century recession obsessed reality most Western nations find themselves in.