Avatar: Fire and Ash: I saw this in the theatre on the Thursday night of its new release. I attended an afternoon performance as the movie is a butt-numbing 3:17 long! The theatres won’t be thrilled with the length. It also has different formats, and although I saw it in a “base” model and avoided the 3D or AVX or other larger formats. This is a visual spectacle and certainly is worthy of the big screen.

I really liked the original Avatar that was released in 2009. I saw it in 3D and felt that this movie did an admirable job with the generally clumsy 3-D and glasses technology. It was a relatively fresh movie, with incredible visuals which pretty closely mirrored Dance With Wolves theme, while focusing on humans who have destroyed their own earth, and looking to mine the natural resources of a new world with a compelling mineral to be mined. Humans being humans (certainly white men) just bully their way through, take what they want, removing the indigenous population with no respect for their traditions and culture. They ignore the spiritual. Jake Sully with help was able to become an avatar and learn their ways.

I won’t recap the full second film, Avatar: The Way of Water, but Jake and his wife moves to another tribe on Pandora. It is a planet and there are different tribes of people who evolve with their natural world. Jake is a wanted man among the Sky People (the humans with all the machinery and technology and guns) and the new tribe isn’t certain about him being around. This new film really is more of the same. More humans acting badly, and never taking into account the culture or spiritual aspects of the indigenous world. For them, it is about money either mined or natural resources like the massive whale species in the oceans. The humans have a military presence, mostly led by Colonel Miles Quaritch who despite being killed off manages to be an avatar himself (don’t ask, as I can’t fully explain it). He wants his revenge. Quaritch manages, after a military setback, to craft an alliance with another clan of indigenous people, led by a fiery woman who worships fire, and resulting ash (thus the title of the film). She is a formidable ally once she sees the value of the human guns and technology.

Things carry on. There are epic battles which mirror the battles in the original. That’s the challenge for me. It all seems so familiar. We have been to Pandora. We have been awed by its natural beauty and creative creatures and plants. Notably I don’t see the dangerous land-based animals that are out to kill the people who enter their world. It seems that it is the military and the Fire Tribe who are the danger to those in the environment now. The oceans still have their fair share of danger. But one more time, nature in the form of Eywa, is asked to battle for the lives of the living creatures to defeat the human invaders and their machines. Fill in the spaces in between with some family drama, and issues about children (nature versus nurture) and paternity and it sums up this movie. The overall verdict? It didn’t suck but it didn’t add a lot to the Pandora universe. Jake Sully as a father is more military and catch phrases than a man well in tuned with his feelings and how he makes his children feel. I will say that his feelings in my view should carry equal weight, and the fact that he has been hunted almost all his life (certainly that life on this planet) might colour his view of the world. Certainly he has the most knowledge of the human military and how it thinks. Despite the borrowed adage from The Untouchables that one doesn’t want to bring a knife to a gun fight, it seems improbable that the natural world can put up a fight against the fire power shown by the humans and Fire People. It is a movie to see in the theatre for the overall visual spectacular and there are some stunning scenes, but the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze for me. This isn’t a Best Picture nominee and I don’t see any in the performances. I will add further that I am not anxious to be spending more time in Pandora for the fourth installment in this series slated for December 31, 2027. As a final note, I would like to see a lot less of Colonel Quaritch in the next film.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You: There is a lot of luzz surrounding this movie, and the performance by Rose Byrne, as the best female actor performance of the year. I needed to check this out. Directed by Mary Bronstein, it is a modern story of a married woman with a child, who is nearing the end of her emotional and mental rope. Byrne plays Linda, who has a career, a young child, a husband and a life that could easily be described as “one battle after another” to borrow from another 2025 popular release.

We meet up with Byrne as she is dealing with doctors to address her child’s condition. The child is under treatment but the doctor wants the daughter to be gaining more weight. Mom and child are also in therapy. The doctors want to schudule a follow on appointment with just Mom. Mom has some challenges in finding a moment to think and when she isn’t being pestered about her parking, she is crossing swords with her own therapist (played well by Conan O’Brian).

Adding to her troubles, her apartment seems to be ganging up on her with an issue worthy of an episode in Breaking Bad! She and her daughter are moved to a dumpy motel by her landlord. For her career, she is a therapist and she counsels various clients (one who is having her own issues trying to cope with a new baby). Things happen and continue to escalate to dramatic effect. I was asked if I liked it, and here was my answer.

I think that Byrne played unhinged very well. She is a woman on the verge of losing her shit. Under a surface of smiling, she is raging inside. One might think that being a therapist might provide her some tools to deal with her many issues. But for every one, therapist or not, there must be a breaking point. This is a movie that is endured. It isn’t enjoyable, beyond the performance and recognizing that life (whatever your own personal situation) could be worse. Do alcohol and drugs help with coping? Absolutely not. I had wondered where her partner was, as they had periodic, cryptic and nasty text and telephone exchanges. The answer comes in the final act and it helps puts some pieces together. I am extremely sympathetic for the lifestyle that she and her husband lead. I think her outburst at the doctor meeting that is set up is absolutely spot on. I feel that her child is a nightmare, which may be understandable but there is no discipline or following through of any kind, with a textbook example of this taking place in a car ride wide a surprising result.

I do think that men and women would be judged differently with behaviour such as hers. Whether fairly or unfairly. I also think that, certainly in the US with access to guns, in quite a few cases this would end with an active shooter, if a man was subject to such stresses. I will say that I have never delivered a child, and I do not know the changes mentally and physically that take place for a woman who delivers a child, or later has a sick child. I am in no position to judge. I will note that I do know what having a sick child can mean, and the impact it has and I can relate with that. Everyone deals with stresses differently. I can say that lack of sleep can absolutely impair one’s judgement, with once again alcohol or drugs also not helping in a positive way. This is NOT a comedy (or a musical) despite what the Golden Globes might say. I respect the work done. I don’t think that this is the Best Actress winner.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery: I heard about this at TIFF this September and it was just released on Netflix. Directed by Rian Johnson it has an all-star cast including Daniel Craig as southern private detective Benoit Blanc, Glenn Close, Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner, Josh Brolin, and also Josh O’Connor who was excellent as Prince Charles in The Crown. Knives Out mysteries are created like Agatha Christie Who-Dun-Its where multiple people have motive, and someone ends up dead. Detective Blanc enters and works to solve the mystery.

This is a complex plot and so you must pay attention. So many things are at play, with the primary story being the murder of a small town priest (played by Brolin) who has a small but committed flock, each with their own challenges. A young priest (O’ Connor) joins the parish at the insistence of his superiors in the church, and has some of his own ideas about faith and what is best for each of the members of the congregation.

For me, I was able to figure out some of this, and I would defy anyone to fully put it all together. As the final act was entered and we hear the detailed explanation of what happened, the whole thing seemed so very convoluted. It spins and spins and spins, with consequences that anyone would have a difficult time anticipating. The performances are good, with Glenn Close sticking out. I liked Josh O’Connor too as the young priest. Josh Brolin as the over-the-top priest makes his point, while looking to accomplish his own goals. But he certainly finds ways to make plenty of enemies as he proceeds. It was good to see Jeremy Renner, post his real-life accident back on New Years Day in 2023 being run over by a truck. In the end, I suppose that my expectations were high on this, all the way back to September, and yet the end result was decent. It was okay. There were some good laughs for me in this for certain situations. But overall, I was glad that I didn’t pay for this at TIFF or the theatre.

Do I think that this is a precedent for things to come in the event that Netflix takes over Warner Bros? Maybe. But I do believe that there is a place for movies in the theatre. I think that the element of being focused with no distractions is incredibly important. I also like (generally) being around other people to experience the movie together. Top Gun, various space movies, spy thrillers like Bond or Bourne, epics like Jaws or Lawrence of Arabia should be seen on the big screen.