Film picks: Avatar: The Way Of Water, Pinocchio, Children Of The Mist
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Avatar: The Way Of Water (PG13)
192 minutes, now showing, 4 stars
Sometimes, something happens in the cinema that lets audiences know that a breakthrough has happened – that film-making has reached a new, higher level. This movie, which the reviewer watched in Imax 3D at Shaw Lido, has created that moment.
In this sequel to the 2009 hit, former Earth soldier Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has lived on Pandora for over a decade in his Na’vi avatar – the tall blue alien body that his mind was downloaded into in the first film. He and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) are mates and have children. Their life in the forest is shattered by invaders. Fleeing to the coast, they find refuge with a group of sea-adapted Na’vi, the Metkayina.
The film is a two-parter, with the second half expected in 2024.
Visually, this film is astonishing and should keep audiences pinned to their seats throughout its marathon three-hour-plus runtime. Director and co-writer James Cameron offers spectacle – overwhelming amounts of it – and not just in eye-popping seascapes and absurdly baroque Pandoran creatures, but also in world-building and storytelling.
The battle that caps the film is a masterpiece of movement and tension worthy of repeat viewing.
Pinocchio (PG)
Mexican magician Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is rich with feeling and imagination.
PHOTO: NETFLIX
117 minutes, Netflix, 4 stars
The classic Carlo Collodi novel of a wooden puppet brought to life has been endlessly retold — but never by Mexican magician Guillermo del Toro, and not like this.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio – a decades-long passion project of the Academy Award-winning film-maker – is a stop-motion animated fantasy rich with feeling and imagination.
The tactile craftsmanship of co-director Mark Gustafson and his animation team is a beauty.
Their gnarled Pinocchio (voiced by Gregory Mann) is crudely nailed together with an ear missing. He is an unruly tyke, a “burden” to grieving carpenter Geppetto (David Bradley), who had carved this pinewood son after losing his actual child in a bombing. It is wartime in his 1930s Italian village and fascism is dangerously on the rise.
Del Toro has refashioned the story of a puppet into a cautionary tale of string-pulling authoritarianism where Pinocchio’s spirited disobedience is now a brave thing.
Children Of The Mist (NC16)
Vietnamese documentary maker Ha Le Diem trains her lens on Di (pictured), a Hmong girl who faces becoming a child bride.
PHOTO: THE PROJECTOR
90 minutes, limited screenings at The Projector
The foggy northern highlands of Vietnam are home to about a million people of the Hmong ethnic group. If a man fancies a girl, who can be as young as 12, he arranges a “bride kidnapping”. It is a traditional practice, but one that has been perverted by money from human traffickers.
Girls who resist sometimes face violence from their captors. For these reasons, the central government has banned the practice, but it still goes on.
In this documentary – presented in partnership with the Singapore Film Society – Ha Le Diem, a Vietnamese film-maker from the Tay ethnic minority, trains her lens on Di, a Hmong girl.
At the age of 12, Di’s childhood could soon come to an abrupt end. Ha’s first feature follows Di as she negotiates her way through a complicated time in her life.
Where: The Projector, Level 5 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road str.sg/wC9W
MRT: Nicoll Highway/Lavender
When: Sunday, 5.30pm, and Dec 26, 2.30pm
Admission: $15 (standard), $13 (students and senior concession holders)
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