Directed by James Cameron. Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Ribisi, David Thewlis, Britain Dalton, Jack Champion, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jamie Flatters, Bailey Bass, Filip Geljo, Duane Evans Jr., Matt Gerald, Dileep Rao, Daniel Lough, Kevin Dorman, Keston John, Alicia Vela-Bailey, and Johnny Alexander.
SYNOPSIS:
Jake and Neytiri’s family grapples with grief after Neteyam’s death, encountering a new, aggressive Na’vi tribe, the Ash People, who are led by the fiery Varang, as the conflict on Pandora escalates and a new moral focus emerges.
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At one point during one of the seemingly endless circular encounters in Avatar: Fire and Ash, (especially if director James Cameron sticks to his plans of making five films in this franchise) former soldier turned blue family man (or family Na’vi?) and protector Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) tells his still-in-pursuit-commander-nemesis-transferred-to-a-Na’vi-body Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) that the world of Pandora runs deeper than he or anyone imagines, and to open his eyes. It’s part of a plot point in which Jake encourages the villainous Quaritch to change his ways.
More fascinatingly, it comes across as a plea of trust from James Cameron (once again writing the screenplay alongside Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver) that there is still much untapped lore and stories to tell in this world. If this repetitive The Way of Water retread is anything to go by, more isn’t justified. Even taken as a spectacle, the unmatched and undeniably stunning visuals (not to mention the most expressive motion capture ever put to screen, movie or video game), that aspect is less impactful, being only two years removed from the last installment rather than a decade, which is not to be confused with less impressive. Fortunately for the film and its gargantuan 3+ hour running time, James Cameron still has enough razzle-dazzle to scoot by here on unparalleled marvel alone, even if the narrative and character expansions are bare-bones.
That’s also what makes it disappointing that this third entry, while introducing a new group dubbed the Ash People led by the strikingly conceptualized Varang (Oona Chaplin) – no one creates scenery-chewing, magnetic, and badass-looking villains quite like James Cameron – and their plight with feeling left behind, rebelling against Pandora religion, Avatar: Fire and Ash is stuck in a cycle of Jake endangering his family (and, by extension, everyone around them) with Quaritch hunting him down for vengeance but this time more fixated on his human son living among them, Spider (Jack Champion) who undergoes a physical transformation that makes him a valuable experiment and, for better or worse, the most important living being in this world. Even the corrupt and greedy marine biologists are back hunting the same godlike sea creatures, leading to what essentially feels like a restaging, if slightly different, riff on the climactic action beat that culminated in last time around.
Worse, whereas The Way of Water had a tighter, more graceful flow from storytelling to spectacle, with sequences extended and drawn out in rapturously entertaining ways, the pacing here is clunkier and frustrating, as every time these characters collide and fight, the story resets and doesn’t necessarily progress. For as much exciting action as there is here, the film also frustratingly starts and stops too much. The last thing I ever expected to type about Avatar: Fire and Ash is that, for all the entrancing technical wizardry on display, fantastical world immersion, and imaginative character designs (complete with occasional macho and corny dialogue that fits, namely since the presentation is in a high frame rate consistently playing like the world’s most expensive gaming cut scene), is often dull.
Yes, everything here, from a special-effects standpoint, is painstakingly crafted, with compelling characters that James Cameron clearly loves (something that shows and allows us to take the story seriously). Staggeringly epic action sequences are worth singling out as in a tier of its own (it’s also a modern movie free from the generally garish and washed-out look of others in this generation), but it’s all in service of a film that is not aware of its strengths, but instead committed to not going anywhere. There are a couple of important details here that one could tell someone before they watch the inevitable Avatar 4, and they will be caught up without needing to watch this. If Avatar: The Way of Water was filler (something I wholeheartedly disagree with), then Avatar: Fire and Ash is nothing. And that’s something that hurts to say.
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Without spoiling too much, the single best scene in the entire film has nothing to do with epic-scale warring, but a smoldering courting from Quaritch for Varang and her army of Ash People to join forces with his group. In a film that’s over three hours, it would also have been welcome to focus more on the Ash People, their past, and their current inner workings alongside their perception of Pandora. It’s not a shock that James Cameron can invest viewers into a villain without doing so, but the alternative of watching Jake grapple with militarizing the Na’vi and insisting everyone learn how to use “sky people” firearms while coming to terms with whether or not he can actually protect his family isn’t as engaging; the latter half comes across as déjà vu.
The presence of Spider amplifies the target on everyone’s backs, with Jake convinced the boy needs to return to his world. His significant other Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), with rage building inside her stemming from the family losing a child in the climax of the previous film, encourages a more aggressive approach and is ready to kill Spider if him being a part of the family threatens their remaining children (with one of them once again a 14-year-old motion captured by Sigourney Weaver, which is not as effective a voice performance this time as there are scenes of loud agony and pain where she sounds her age). The children also get to continue their plot arcs, with similarly slim narrative progression.
Not without glimpses of movie-magic charm and emotional moments would one dare say James Cameron is losing his touch. However, Avatar: Fire and Ash is all the proof anyone needs to question whether five of these are required, as it’s beginning to look more and more as if the world and characters aren’t as rich as the filmmaker believes they are. It’s another action-packed technical marvel with sincere, endearing characters, but the cycling nature of those elements is starting to wear thin and yield diminishing returns.
Full of clear northern light and personal crisis, Sentimental Value felt almost like a throwback film for me. It explores emotions not as an adjunct to the main, action-driven plot but as the very subject of the movie itself.
Sentimental Value Directed by Joachim Trier – 2025 Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
The film stars Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav Borg, a 70-year-old director who returns to Oslo to stir up interest in a film he wants to make, while health and financing in an era dominated by bean counters still allow it. He hopes to film at the family house and cast his daughter Nora, a renowned stage actress in her own right, as the lead. However, Nora struggles with intense stage fright and other personal issues. She rejects the role, disdaining the father who abandoned the family when he left her and her sister Agnes as children. In response, Gustav lures a “name” American actress, Rachel Keys (Elle Fanning), to play the part.
Sentimental Value, written by director Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt, delves into sibling dynamics, the healing power of art, and how family trauma can be passed down through generations. Yet the film also has moments of sly humor, such as when the often oblivious Gustav gives his nine-year-old grandson a birthday DVD copy of Gaspar Noé’s dreaded Irreversible, something intense and highly inappropriate.
For me, the film harkens back to the works of Ingmar Bergman. The three sisters (with Elle Fanning playing a kind of surrogate sister) reminded me of the three siblings in Bergman’s 1972 Cries and Whispers. In another sequence, the shot composition of Gustav and his two daughters, their faces blending, recalls the iconic fusion of Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson’s faces in Persona.
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It’s the acting that truly carries the film. Special mention goes to Renate Reinsve, who portrays the troubled yet talented Nora, and Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav, an actor unafraid to take on unlikable characters (I still remember him shooting a dog in the original Insomnia). In both cases, the subtle play of emotions—especially when those emotions are constrained—across the actors’ faces is a joy to watch. Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (who plays Agnes, the other sister with her own set of issues) are both excellent.
It’s hardly a Christmas movie, but more deeply, it’s a winter film, full of emotions set in a cold climate.
> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Laemmle Glendale, and AMC The Americana at Brand 18.
You can call me one-track-minded or say that I focus on the wrong things, but do not include an element that I am then expected to forget. Especially if that “element” is an animal – and a dog, even.
In No More Time, we meet a couple, and it takes quite some time before we suddenly see that they have a dog with them. It appears in a scene suddenly, because their sweet little dog has a purpose: A “meet-cute” with a girl who wants to pet their dog.
After that, the dog is rarely in the movie or mentioned. Sure, we see it in the background once or twice, but when something strange (or noisy) happens, it’s never around. This completely ruins the illusion for me. Part of the brilliance of having an animal with you during an apocalyptic event is that it can help you.
And yet, in No More Time, this is never truly utilized. It feels like a strange afterthought for that one scene with the girl to work, but as a dog lover, I am now invested in the dog. Not unlike in I Am Legend or Darryl’s dog in The Walking Dead. As such, this completely ruined the overall experience for me.
If it were just me, I could (sort of) live with it. But there’s a reason why an entire website is named after people demanding to know whether the dog dies, before they’ll decide if they’ll watch a movie.
The Timothée Chalamet movie that’s arriving on Christmas Day is “a 150-minute-long heart attack of a film,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In “a career-best turn” that’s “a feverish go-for-broke tour de force,” Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champ in 1950s New York City who’s ready to lie, cheat, and steal for the chance to become the best in the world. This first film from director Josh Safdie since 2019’s Uncut Gems turns out to be a character study that “doubles as a cracked American success story,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Marty is a scrawny kid with a pathetic mustache, but he’s also a fast-talking grifter with supreme self-confidence, and his game earns him a trip to London and the world championship tournament before a humbling stokes his hunger for a comeback.
Surrounding Chalamet is “a supporting cast you’d swear was assembled via Mad Libs,” because it features Fran Drescher, Penn Jillette, Tyler the Creator, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, and—as a faded movie star Marty sweet-talks into an affair—Gwyneth Paltrow, “reminding you how good she was before Goop became her full-time gig.” To me, it’s the story beneath the story that makes Safdie’s “nerve-jangling, utterly exhilarating” movie one of the best of the year, said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “It’s about a Jewish kid who knows just what kind of antisemitism and finely stratified racial dynamics he’s up against in postwar America, and who is using every means at his disposal to smack back.”
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‘Is This Thing On?’
Directed by Bradley Cooper (R)
★★★
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“There are far worse things that a gifted filmmaker could offer an audience these days than a feel-good divorce comedy,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. But it’s still slightly disappointing that screen star Bradley Cooper has followed up A Star Is Born and Maestro with this minor work, due Dec. 19, about a father of two who starts doing stand-up in New York City to cope with the likely end of his marriage. With Will Arnett and Laura Dern as its co-stars, Is This Thing On? is “an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie,” but it’s also so eager to hide the agonies of divorce that it “can feel like it’s cutting corners.”
The 124-minute film “doesn’t really get going until hour two,” said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. Until then, it’s “lethargic and listless,” slowed by long takes “that drag on and on.” Fortunately, Arnett and Dern have real chemistry that kicks in when Dern’s Tess accidentally catches Arnett’s Alex performing his bit about their sidelined marriage and sees him with new eyes. Good as Arnett is, “it’s Dern who’s the revelation as a woman who truly doesn’t know what she wants and is figuring it out in real time,” said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. Cooper, playing a reprobate friend of Alex’s, gives himself the script’s biggest laughs. More importantly, he proves again to be a director with “a real flair for domestic drama.”
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