Movies to watch this week: The longest Avatar film so far, plus a Brokeback Mountain successor

Years have passed since Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former US Marine, elected to abandon his human self to live on Pandora as his Na’vi avatar with the warrior princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). The couple now have teenage children, one of whom was killed at the end of the last film in a battle with the Resources Development Administration, the ruthless force from Earth bent on colonising Pandora and plundering its assets.

And just to add to the tangled relationships between species, the Sullys are also caring for Spider (Jack Champion), a human child orphaned during the hostilities, and Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), a teenage girl born from the avatar body of the RDA’s chief scientist, Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver). Got that? Now for reasons even more complicated, they have decided to leave their haven among the reef people and head for the hills.

They are bent on returning to Neytiri’s forest clan, but it’s not going to be easy. Typically, Cameron is taking them – and us – on the scenic route with a wealth of violent tribal encounters popping up along the way.

With a story as intrinsically weird as this one, there is only one way to go: Make it big. And as usual, Cameron doesn’t disappoint. As soon as you put on your 3D glasses, you’re enveloped in what seems like a paradise of dreamy underwater sequences and peaceful sylvan landscapes but, predictably enough, this impression of serenity is fleeting.

The skies are soon abuzz with whizzing flocks of exotic creatures that the Na’vi employ as flying taxis. The Ash People are on the attack under the command of their queen, Varang – a hissing bundle of nerves played by Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter, Oona. They’re a fearsome sight, made zombie-like by their habit of mixing ash into a paste and smearing their faces and bodies with it.

The action is relentless, as well as spectacular, which is just as well because the dialogue is risible. The script’s only flirtation with humour comes from the occasional bit of sarcasm supplied by Jake’s nemesis from his days as a Marine, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang). Thought to be dead, he has been given new life by science as a bigger and tougher hybrid version of his old self. It’s no surprise when he and Varang decide they’re kindred spirits.

The human villains are even more cartoonish than the Na’vi. The motion-capture techniques used to create the blue-skinned creatures have come a long way since the first film and it’s possible to get an occasional glimpse of the actor behind the elongated body, the wide eyes and the funny ears, but your ability to suspend disbelief depends entirely on Cameron’s success in keeping up the headlong pace. He just about manages it but the film’s running time of more than 3¼ hours makes it a long haul.
Reviewed by Sandra Hall

Avatar: Fire and Ash is in cinemas from Thursday

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The pair share an interest in the kind of folk music Lionel grew up with – and as they soon discover back at David’s flat, they have some other things in common too.

Whatever might be developing between them is interrupted by the First World War. But a year or two later they join forces once again, when David invites Lionel to join him on a department-funded research trip to gather songs.

This working holiday is something of a romantic idyll, at least in the memory of Lionel, the film’s narrator, not that shadows aren’t visible: the songs are often mournful, the locals not always friendly, and David himself, for all his charm, is in some respects hard to pin down or even trust completely.

When they part at the end of the summer, on uncertain terms, the film is still less than half over. But what follows, by design, is one long diminuendo.

Fleeing his emotionally demanding mother (Molly White), Lionel travels first to Italy, then to England, where he acquires a doting upper-class girlfriend (Hadley Robinson). David, in the meantime, drops out of the picture, leaving Lionel’s letters unanswered.

Both in theme and structure, The History of Sound recalls Ang Lee’s once furiously debated Brokeback Mountain (now widely and justly viewed as a modern classic). But this isn’t quite the same kind of full-bodied love story. Everything is seen from Lionel’s point of view, leaving us to intuit what we can of David’s side of the story from O’Connor’s Mona Lisa smile and fidgety way of holding a cigarette.

While they’re travelling together, their physical relationship seems almost casual, a natural accompaniment to the scholarly enterprise that preoccupies them in the daytime, and though the film deals directly or otherwise with several forms of prejudice, the main force that drives them doesn’t necessarily have much to do with homophobia, even of the internalised kind.

All the same, this is a film about repression, keyed to Mescal’s typically gentle, unemphatic presence (though it’s O’Connor, in the smaller role, who sticks in the mind more strongly). The filmmaking can feel repressed in its own right, as if Hermanus were bent on counteracting the potentially corny, over-explicit elements of Shattuck’s script.

Still, the studied restraint pays off at the crucial moments, both in the first act and towards the end. One image in particular stands out, a fixed long shot of a dingy kitchen just after Lionel receives a piece of life-altering news.

Standing against the back wall with his arms folded, he bows his head, briefly overcome by emotion. Then he briskly walks offscreen to grab his jacket, reappears and departs once more, while above the kitchen table the smoke from an abandoned cigarette continues to drift through the frame.
Reviewed by Jake Wilson

The History Of Sound is in cinemas from Thursday