Matthew's Journal

Avatar: The Way of Water is a sprawling spectacle of a film - over 3 hours long, and a sight to behold (I imagine it is much more impressive in a cinema in 3D, but I'm still not sure cinemas are sensible given Covid). Unfortunately, there isn't really the plot to support such an epic - both not enough plot for a film of this length, and also not enough quality to the plot - it was pretty predictable, saggy, and rather repetitive (even one of the characters complains about being tied to a ship's railings again). I'm not sure there's a lot thematically new here from the previous film (which I watched recently), though I can't really object to "commercial whaling is bad" as a message. The model of fatherhood was pretty weak, though - is "protecting" really all there is to it?

Nope is an altogether different piece of work - a horror film with UFOs that's also about our love of spectacle, how people deal with trauma, and the erasure of black contributions to industry. It also has a great sense of alien menace; but unlike some horror where the antagonist is essentially random, here there is some sense to what is going on. Some good funny moments, too. I'm not quite sure it hangs together as a coherent story, though - there's almost too much going on, with some of the backstories, and the various different character arcs.