Avatar

Very, very intoxicating. What surprised me the most was that not only the eyes and ears experience an orgasmic throw. Personally, I felt emotion over the love affair between an earthling and a blue huntress, which I did not feel in the slightest when watching Titanic. Avatar is not just dazzling... it is alive. The film may have too much of the classic narrative schemes, but it doesn't matter, because the mind walks the familiar path and sight and hearing fly in the unimagined. There are probably many people who will point out things like activism, or that it is cold. I didn't see any of that in Avatar. Instead, what I saw was very light and brilliantly crafted telling of a romantic fairy tale about beings bound to their planet. Together with Star Trek, this year's clear winner in the heaviest weight category. [85%] P.S. I just can’t keep my mouth shut... I have a question:"A strange mixture of Moore's environmentalism, Zeman's poetics and Vinnetou's naivety "cut" with the aesthetics of The Lord of the Rings - does that mean Miloš Zeman, who embraces trees?" I probably haven’t seen as much from Karel as I had hoped. (12/15/2009)

A great fairy tale adventure for those of us who have been waiting all these months and years for it to come, and a grand spectacle that becomes so huge in the end that human senses cannot absorb everything and a regular director can't control it. And it is right here where it shows that giving so much time to a movie sometimes really pays off, to the last minute and dollar. Although the compassionate ethnic/ecological message did not hit the mark in my case, everything else is part of an opus that has never been seen before. An awe-struck 90% for a movie whose sequel will have no rival on a global scale. (12/17/2009)

The story is very pedestrian, but who cares. Thanks to James Cameron, I was again that little boy who during the deep totalitarian era, with my mouth wide open, devoured a Polish channel on a grainy black-and-white television, including the first Star Wars, or Zeman's A Journey into the Primeval Times. I devoured Avatar similarly, experiencing partly the joy of exploring the fictional world of Pandora and partly the fascination with 3D technology, which I was a virgin to this day. I really couldn't get enough of that three-dimensional image!! I have some reservations, of course. Cameron put a lot of effort io clothing his film in a 3D garb, but much less on the originality of the emotions of the characters or giving them a compelling ambiguity. All the characters are so naively one-dimensional, just like in fairy tales, but I found it endearing in a way. I hereby forbid the use of the world “cliché”, because the great James doesn’t deserve it. He doesn't deserve it because he invited me to his house for two and a half hours and shared all his hi-tech toys with me. Thanks Jim. (12/18/2009)

Incredibly flawless and the most amazing cinema experience of my life. A film that erases the boundaries between the screen and the viewer and that lets you look into another world, to the point that it makes you want to believe Pandora is real. I expected a lot from Avatar and I had come to terms with the fact that such massive expectations could never be met, but the result actually surpassed them. This is something that I could have never imagined, even in my wildest fantasies, because up until now nobody had set a standard for the cinema screen according to which we could set our expectations. The story perhaps isn’t great, but it’s beautiful, classic in the best sense of the word, and certainly not worse than other blockbusters. And to be honest, I don’t think I would be able to watch something intricate, like Strange Days for instance, in this package. Once there are more comparable films, Avatar probably won’t be my favourite (due to personal genre preferences), but it will always be the first. Another viewing is mandatory, the cinema is mandatory, 3D is mandatory! Cameron was the king of the world, now he’s the emperor of the galaxy, next time he’ll reach at least god level, and after this experience, I’m almost certain he’ll pull it off. PS: The posers with prejudices like “I can’t be arsed with a fairytale about blue monkeys” will surely find plenty of things to criticise and I wish them the best wholeheartedly, they are only depriving themselves of the experience. PS2: The experience from the second viewing is at least the same. During the last 60 minutes those goosebumps hardly disappeared. (12/18/2009)

I do appreciate Cameron's dedication, which meant years of waiting for proper technology and the employment of two special effects giants. The result definitely marks a significant shift for cinema as a whole. Yet that's where the positives end for me... because then we get almost three hours of a shallow story (which could still be tolerated - okay, it’s a fairy tale), dull emotions, the most stupid military lines in history, and blue-green agitation so vigorous that even Greenpeace pales compared to it. The three-dimensional effect is great (Cameron knows how to work with space perfectly), but underneath the fancy tinsel I couldn't find anything more and about halfway through I wasn't even entertained. Sorry, but I was bored shitless with this film. Three stars from me. (12/20/2009)