Some thoughts on Avatar: The Way of Water.

 I got real in-depth about the 3D (good) and HFR (bad) of the new Jim Cameron joint.

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Famous People talked with me: Robert Zemeckis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

A fun condensation of The Walk's press conference from this year's New York Film Festival. I dug the film a lot, though it had too much voiceover and I spent the last fifty minutes in twitchy nervous unease.

At the movies: Furious Seven.

This was a difficult film to write about. For a lot of reasons. But I think I got at what didn't work, as well as how difficult the circumstances under which the film was made and finished were.

At the movies: The Black Hole.

A 35mm print of The Black Hole in Nashville, and I will not be able to see it. I've seen this film probably seventy or so times, and it still remains dear to me despite its flaws. I get to talk about it briefly online at the Scene, and if you'd like to know more, you can read a review I wrote of the film in 2001.

Catching Up at the Movies: Enter The Void.

A singular visual experience. Certainly worth seeing in theatres.

At the movies: Paranormal Activity.

Since she was eight years old, Katie has been haunted by an unseeable force. Now, in a bizarre mix of genuine concern and antiquated codes of macho foolishness, her day trader boyfriend Micah has decided to setup a mildly elaborate recording system to try and confirm visual and audible evidence of this mystery that has plagued his beloved for years. But what they capture is something not easily explainable, and what they find is something beyond logic and reason.

Here’s another case of a no-budget independent shocker that relies on offscreen sound and the power of suggestion to yield bigtime shock and even bigger dollar signs. It’s The Blair Witch Project all over again, as an insistent and well-aimed marketing campaign has turned a tiny tape of terror into a multimillion dollar event.

It’s all the industry and media can talk about, and it hasn’t even opened wide across the country yet. Hollywood dreams about this kind of success, and audiences, as always, respond to a good scare.

This film doesn't have Blair Witch's remarkable ability to imbue the widest of open spaces with the most pervasive kind of dread, nor does it have any real iconography or particular style. The former film required a vivid imagination and a sense of the overwhelming possibilities of the dark, whereas Paranormal Activity seems just a little too conscious of what an audience these days requires.

But regardless of its flaws; and there are quite a few, all coming in to play whenever the filmmakers decide to inject some narrative (e.g. psychic, Ouija board, theory and expository history of demonology), Paranormal Activity is a must-see for anyone who wants to be terrified.

All you need to know is that some truly scary stuff happens herein; things that are scary because they work on the imagination, and scary because when they do get physical and crazy, it feels unreal- not in the way that CG has desensitized us to almost all fantastic imagery, but unreal in the way that triggers the hair on the back of your neck, that triggers the heart rate, and the cold sweats, and the parts of the brain where nightmares live.

At the movies: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the tale of a man who is born as an old man and whose body, as it grows older, becomes physically younger. With this unique perspective, Button is able to view the triumphs and tragedies of life in a way that no one else can.

After years of making adventurous films that pushed narrative and technical envelopes, it appears that David Fincher has decided to swing mainstream, and in the process, he's racking up countless critics' awards and praise with effusive comparisons to Forrest Gump and Big Fish.

Sadly, those comparisons are apt, as this Curious Case is stuffed to the gills with vague platitudes and what sounds like wisdom if you don't listen too hard. Brad Pitt gives 110% in the titular role, but so much digital work is involved in his performance it creates a vast disconnect with the audience. I'm happy that David Fincher is getting commercial respect, but let's hope his next film aims for a bit more than, ultimately, twang-y blather.