For maybe the third time in his career, the immodest Canadian has made "the most expensive movie ever," confident that showmanship never goes out of style.

Rating: 9/10 (2 February 2010)

We're reminded that the "Titanic" director is an avid deep-sea diver: Pandora's rainforest resembles a spectacular coral reef. At night, the plants have a phosphorescent glow. When the Na'vi tread through it, the ground lights up beneath their feet (I kept waiting for someone to break into a chorus of "Billie Jean").
It's this vivid blurring of the real and the imaginary, the material world and the spiritual, that's at the heart of Cameron's movie.
In his peculiar vision of utopia, technology and ecology fuse. On Pandora, electrical currents flow through the root systems of the trees.
When the Na'vi ride a winged dragon, the first thing they do is plug into its circuitry. It's a techno-geek's pantheism, a new gloss on the counterculture slogan "Turn on, tune in and drop out." Jake Sully's out of body experience is simply another extension of this interconnectivity, as if role-playing games might one day lead to a profound philosophical empathy, a higher human consciousness.
iReporter: "Avatar" 3-D effects "seamless" Subtlety is not high on Cameron's agenda, and however many Academy Awards it may pick up, best screenplay seems like a long shot.
The film wears its anti-imperialist, anti-corporate sentiments on its sleeve (Stephen Lang's trigger-happy military commander spouts "war on terror" slogans to hammer home the point).