Blue Christmas

Avatar is for the eyes, not the brain. Plus: Hang it up, Hugh Grant.

(Dec. 24, 2009) Previews

Opening Wednesday, Dec. 23, is the sequel we’ve all been waiting for: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. This time out, the singing rodents get to cavort with the Chipettes. Rated PG for some mild rude humor. 89m. At the Broadway, Fortuna and Mill Creek.

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Opening Christmas Day is the multi-Golden Globe nominated Up in the Air, starring George Clooney as a consultant who flies around the country to bring layoff news to corporate employees, thereby saving his bosses from discomfort. Directed by Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking; Juno), the film costars Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick and Jason Bateman. Rated R for language and some sexual content. 109m. At the Broadway.

Robert Downey Jr. is Holmes and Jude Law is Watson in the latest take on Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie. Set in 1891, Sherlock is into martial arts while Watson just wants to have fun as they battle to save their country. Rachel McAdams costars as temptress Irene Adler and Mark Strong as the latest adversary, Lord Blackwood. Looks like fun. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some startling images and a scene of suggestive material. 128m. At the Broadway, Fortuna, Mill Creek and Minor.

Directed by Nancy Meyers, It’s Complicated stars Meryl Streep as Jane Adler, who faces a choice between an affair with her ex-husband Jake (Alec Baldwin), an attorney now remarried to much younger Agness (Lake Bell), or a relationship with recently divorced architect Adam (Steve Martin). That’s a difficult choice? Rated R for some drug content and sexuality. 118m. At the Broadway, Fortuna and Mill Creek.

Reviews

AVATAR: If nothing else, James Cameron has grandiose dreams when it comes to film, and a lot of patience when it comes to following through on those dreams. He apparently wrote a treatment for Avatar back in 1994, and production on the film was supposed to begin in the late ’90s. So here we are almost at the end of 2009 and, technology having caught up with Cameron’s aspirations for the film, Avatar finally gets a release in both 2-D and 3-D formats.

Since I saw the 2-D print I can’t speak for how the film looks with the 3-D glasses on, but I can say that what I saw was from a technical perspective beautifully accomplished. I was somewhat less impressed with many aspects of the story that the technology was presumably supporting, and with the acting of the human characters, but not so much that I didn’t enjoy the total viewing experience.

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