A pretty good year with a few movies that I would classify as great. The most popular movies were “Home Alone” and “Ghost,” the first of which inspired three sequels and the latter of which inspired what I still contend is the funniest movie trailer of all time.  The Oscars were particularly competitive and geeks are still mad about the outcome.

The nominees:

Dances With Wolves: I love it, but then my Indian name is Struggles with White Guilt.

Ghost: I distinctly remember thinking, really? Ghost? Really?! I don’t dislike it, but it wasn’t exactly Oscar bait. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Awakenings: Mmmmmm, L Dopa. Yummy, delicious L Dopa.

Goodfellas: Scorsese’s career seemed to build to this and plateau with this. I love some early Scorsese, and I love some later Scorsese. But this is the centerpiece of his career, in my opinion.

The Godfather Part III: Okay. Really? Really?!!! There were about a hundred gangster movies released in 1990, so it was practically unavoidable that two of them would wind up Best Picture Nominees, but seriously?

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED

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Spoilerific means there are spoilers. I hope that’s clear, because now that these films have been out for a while it seems safer to give away more information regarding plot and go into greater detail as to what’s so terribly wrong with them. In the case of “Precious” and “Up in the Air” there was more I wanted to say in the initial review and didn’t. With “Avatar” I just want to address the “Dances With Wolves” comparisons.

Avatar vs. Dances With Wolves

Comparing Kevin Costner’s elegant and moving Oscar-winning Western to the junk that is “Avatar” is unfair. There are similarities in the messaging, but when it comes to the execution and storytelling – the only thing that counts — the juvenile “Avatar” is a Scooby-Doo episode compared to “Wolves.”

In the first twenty-minutes (heck, in the trailer), the ham-fisted James Cameron telegraphs every plot point, character arc and moment, right down to the natives’ trendy spiritualism and insufferable sanctimony, all the way through to the protagonist’s eventual decision to turn on his own people and fight for his nobly dull new friends. The climax of “Titanic” is more surprising than ”Avatar,” and there are drivers-ed films with more humor.  (more…)

Imagine the story of a soldier sent to fight native tribes for their land, but finds that once he actually meets and gets to know them, he respects them too much to follow through with his mission. Gradually he becomes one of the tribe, leaving his old way of life behind to embrace their nature-loving culture.

You might think you’ve just read the synopsis for Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning classic “Dances With Wolves.” But it’s actually also the core plot of another Oscar-winning director’s new film: James Cameron’s “Avatar.”

The fact that “Avatar” is basically “Dances With Wolves in Space” represents the film’s major flaw. For despite being the most expensive film of all time, with a $300 million production cost and another estimated $200 million spent on advertising, “Avatar” is also one of the most derivative films of all time. It’s hard to believe that a man like Cameron (“Terminator 2,” “Titanic”), who is capable of absolute genius in creating the film’s staggering visuals and astonishing breakthroughs in 3D IMAX technology, is unable to come up with a screenplay that isn’t a hamfisted mishmash of countless better films’ plot elements and a heavy-handed bash on modern American foreign policy. (more…)

In the video below [click to play], Oscar-winning director James Cameron spills some of the story beats for his long-in-production (four years) “Avatar,” which finally hits theatres this December 18th.  

He wrote the script fourteen years ago, before the technology was available to film it, spent nine years developing the cameras, and is now shooting live action in “Stereoscopic 3D.” Cameron’s shown bits of the film to friends and says they describe the experience as completely immersive, a “dream state … dreaming with your eyes wide open.”

Sounds like an amazing experience awaits.  The story, however, sounds awfully familiar:  Most of the action is set in the 22nd Century in the Alpha Centauri star system on a large Earth-like moon called Pandora … … (sorry, had to let a flash of Nerd Panic pass) … filled with lush rain forests and exotic creatures. A humanoid race, the Na’vi, inhabit the planet. They’re ten feet tall, striped like tigers and sport large tails. They’re also primitive, using bow and arrows to hunt. (more…)