I followed up my first review of Avatar with a review of a movie that I actually enjoyed even more, The Book of Eli. I was pleasantly surprised of how this post apocalyptic movie played out.

This movie takes place sometime in the future after a nuclear war nearly wipes out the human race. But, there are remnants of survivors scattered across the nation trying to start anew. Denzel Washington’s character, Eli, has been trekking across the country for 30 years in search of a safe haven for himself and his sacred book. You’re probably thinking 30 years and still haven’t gotten to his destination? Well, watch the movie and the end may give you some explanation as to why. Anyway, Eli claims that a higher power spoke to him one day and told him to take a journey out west and he will find a safe haven for himself and for this book. The latter part of his journey is where the movie begins.

PROS: The story line for The Book of Eli was pretty good and the movie was very well directed. The acting was…well, it’s Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman. So yeah, the casting and acting did not disappoint. Neither, did the choreography for the fight sequences between Denzel’s character and the lawless bandits. The ending of the movie was definitely a nice touch that caught me by surprise.

CONS:

As I write this, my very first movie review and the most recent movie I’ve seen, turns out to be the highest grossing movie of all time. But, don’t mistaken that for being the movie with the highest ticket sales of all time. Avatar doesn’t even rank in the top 10 in that statistic. It still lags behind other notable movies like: Star Wars, Titanic, Gone With the Wind, Forest Gump, and the list goes on. Of course, Avatar is still going strong in theaters, so, when it’s all said and done it could very well surpass some of these great movies.

Now for my review, it took me 4 weeks to catch Avatar on IMAX 3D at the Irvine Spectrum. Simply because tickets kept selling out for this movie over the weekend. I’m not a big fan of watching movies with 3D glasses, but, I figured it would be worth the wait to see Avatar for the first time in 3D. So, after 4 weeks of waiting and after the first 20 minutes of getting use to watching Avatar with those glasses, I’m glad to have finally seen this movie in IMAX 3D. The visuals and special effects were quite impressive. But, I had expected that since there was so much hype after 4 weeks of release. It was a bit over-hyped hence the 4 star rating.

Pros: Again, the special effects and visuals were fantastic. If you watch this movie, I recommend you watch it on IMAX 3D. The casting was good too. Sam Worthington, probably the next big name in Hollywood, was the leading blue alien in this movie and he played his part well. Not an Oscar type of performance but, then again, I don’t think this movie would allow an Oscar type of performance by any actor.  Simply because the actors were mostly in CGI. It was also nice to see Sigourney Weaver casted in another James Cameron movie. Sigourney Weaver was the leading actress in another James Cameron alien movie, “Aliens”. Anyway, the best part of the movie was the fact that the special effects did not overshadow the plot and storyline. If anything it was the perfect compliment to the storyline.

Cons: I’m being nit picky about this but, the year is something like 2050 and earthlings are basically invading a peaceful planet because of the much needed natural resources found on Pandora. Nothing wrong with that…but, this planet is being inhabited by indigenous-like blue aliens. In a way, it was like watching the history channel about the Myans. It’s not that big of a deal but, I just felt that these aliens were a little bit too human for me. Except they were blue and much taller.

Overall, the movie had a good cast, great story, and awesome visuals. There were also some political overtones,  i’m sure you’ll notice. It also made us humans look bad. Although, we may be technologically far more advanced than these aliens that we are invading, humans really haven’t evolved much on how we treat our neighbors. Humans are actually just as primitive, if not more primitive, than the being living on Pandora. In 2050, we are still selfish, greedy, power hungry being. Well, the movie had plenty of stuff that we can relate to.