"Avatar"

No one can say the technology in “Avatar” isn’t up-to-the-minute.

Writer-director James Cameron has taken the motion capture technique (previously used in “The Polar Express,” “Beowulf” and the Jim Carrey version of “A Christmas Carol”) to an astonishing new level, and the digitally created otherworldly landscapes in which most of the story unfolds are often awe-inspiring.

From a purely technical standpoint, the movie is a triumph: Watching “Avatar” you may think you’ve tapped directly into Cameron’s dreams — or, in certain sections, nightmares. A few hundred million dollars buys a lot of stunning visuals, including a flock of shrieking dragon-birds, a cluster of brush-covered monoliths suspended like petrified bubbles in the skies above the planet Pandora, and a phosphorescent forest rife with towering foliage and tentacled trees.

Cameron’s screenplay, however, is old-school in the extreme. The good guys are a race of 10-foot-tall, nature-worshipping, cyan-skinned beings known as the Na’vi; the forces of darkness are represented by the heavy-handed foot soldiers of the military/industrial complex.

Read the full review here.