The Best Movie of 2009

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2009)

I wanted to see this in 3D as it was intended, but unfortunately the people I was going with just wanted to see it in 2D. Not all was lost, however, as the screen I saw it on was a large 70 X 30' screen. It had golden curtains that were pulled back prior to the movie starting, and the manager who introduced the film beforehand boasted that this was the largest screen in Arizona. I'm not entirely sure if that's true, what with there being IMAX's in the area and all, but I'll admit it was an impressive auditorium.
Several trailers played beforehand. The first was a great looking action comedy starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz called Knight and Day. Bad title, but it's now my second most anticipated movie of 2010, behind The Expendables. There were also trailers for Clash of the Titans, Salt, and one or two others I can't recall.
Alright, now for the actual movie. I was extremely impressed. And since I only saw it in 2D, I didn't even see the biggest part of what makes this film so special. That will change next week when I see it in IMAX 3D, but for now it's a tribute to the film's story, a rousing and compelling tale that doesn't rely on gimmicky 3D, only adds it as a bonus.
We all have an idea of the story by now, and some call it unoriginal, clichéd, etc. Being a remake of Infernal Affairs, you could say the same of The Departed, but like Ebert pointed out in his review of it, "a movie is not about what it's about; it's about how it's about it." This certainly applies to Avatar as well; it might be a retread of familiar stories like FernGully and Dances with Wolves, but it's just told - and shown - so well that it doesn't matter in the slightest.
Credit to the actors for making the story as good as it is. Sam Worthington is solid, as are Sigourney Weaver and Giovanni Ribisi, but the two people who really steal the show are Stephen Lang and Zoe Saldana. Lang is the perfect antagonist for the movie, a real evil hardass we love to hate. And Saldana... You'll remember her as Uhura from Star Trek. She plays Neytiri, the Na'vi female interest Worthington falls for as he comes to know the alien race. Saldana plays her as strong and fierce, but full of emotion as well. We can thank her for a lot of the emotional heavy lifting in Avatar - tragic events wouldn't be what they are without her gut wrenching reactions.
I'm unable to comment on the 3D, but the other effects were terrific. I had considered Terminator 3 to be the benchmark for CGI up until about 2007, at which point Transformers set the bar, but now it's Avatar. Pandora is photorealistic, plain and simple. I'd hesitate to say the same for the Na'vi, but they're close. To be fair, we've seen effects this good before, but what sets Avatar apart is the sheer magnitude of it all - we've seen great CGI but never to this extent. Cameron also makes effective use of motion capture, the same technology Peter Jackson used for Gollum in the LOTR trilogy and King Kong. I couldn't tell if he ever used models, but that's to the credit of the movie. After all, Cameron's goal was for us to be unable to differentiate between what was real and what wasn't. And he succeeds.
All in all, Avatar is a rousing, exciting, action/adventure epic, and I can't wait to see it again in IMAX 3D. This is the best movie of 2009.
9.5/10