Alec Muzquiz (AlecMuzquiz96)

Avatar" tells a story that has been told before, it is basically "Dances with Wolves" in space. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is asked to go deep into space to the planet Pandora to do a job his twin brother was supposed to do. His twin brother died shortly before he was set to go to this planet. Since Jake is his twin, he has similar genetics to his brother, he needs this so he can do the job (will explain more on this soon). Jake decides to take the job. This megacorrproation is looking to mine this planet for a valued ore. Unfortunately the biggest deposit lies underneath the home of the Navi, a ten foot tall blue skinned native tribe who has been at the brink of war with the company. The company devolved Navi bodies that humans can use. Jake's job is to gain is to gain the natives truest. But he starts to wonder if he is on the right side.

This is Sam Worthington's best performance to date. With that being said, it's still not a fantastic performance. He is good, but his performance is bland, he doesn't try to take his acting to a new level. You could say the same thing for Stephen Lang. He plays the villain, so I wanted him to really step up his acting, but he never did. Sigourney Weaver gives one of the best performances in the whole movie. The only problem is she isn't in the movie for that long, so she doesn't have that much screen time. The other great performance comes from Zoe Saldana, she is doing the motion capture the whole time, and she nails it. Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, and Joel David Moore do fine in their roles as well.

What hinders "Avatar" in almost every aspect of the movie is the script. The script is poorly written. It's not gut wrenching bad, but it's pretty much mediocre dialog for the entire movie. The actors suffer from this because however good the actor, it's hard to make cheesy dialog come out good. The way they explain all the connections that the Navi have with the forest is all cliched, as is mostly everything here. The script is a bunch of already used material. I wish James Cameron had gotten someone else to write the script other than himself, he just isn't the best writer. With an epic like this, it would have helped to have better dialog than it has.

Now I said James Cameron wasn't a good writer, but he is a good director (not an outstanding director, but a good one none the less).

whole review at http://moviereviewer96.wordpress.com/

Read the whole review at :http://moviereviewer96.wordpress.com/
Taking place in New Orleans, Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is a former smuggler who has gone straight because of his wife (Kate Beckinsale) and his two sons. Unexpectedly his wife's brother (Caleb Landry Jones) gets in some trouble with a local criminal (Giovanni Ribisi), so Chris has to go back into the business with his best friend Sebastian (Ben Foster). Their plan is to ship out to Panama, and then pick up a very large truck sized pile of counterfeit bills. Of course not everything goes according to plan.

What surprised me about "Contraband" is that there is very little action in it. The movie has many slow parts where they show the plan and try to show some character development. Unfortunately none of that worked in the movies favor. It would have worked better if their was more action in it. Everything is a standard point A to point B to point C progression. There are a few twists here, but you can see them coming from a mile away. The character development they throw at you works to a certain point, theirs a limit to how much you actually come to care about anyone.