Colour beginning to drain from the Avatar universe

James Cameron's latest blue epic finds little for its cast to do, writes Clarisse Loughrey. Plus thriller 'The Housemaid' is wickedly camp and 'Sentimental Value' powerfully acted

- Clarisse Loughrey

We need James Cameron. We need the Hollywood titan who can chaperone technological progress without betraying his creative principles. We need someone to reject generative AI, to preserve the theatrical experience, and to respect the artistry of his VFX workers. A few mocked Damien Chazelle for including the original 2009 Avatar in his canon-enforcing montage of cinema history at the end of Babylon (2022). They were fools to do so.

Yet it can also be true that, at 197 minutes long, the third film in his Avatar series may make you feel like a restless child forced to sit through an Easter sermon. Cinema's plushier pews still start to feel a little rough on the back when Jake Sully's (Sam Worthington) flock of Na'vi children (plus one human) are, for what feels like the hundredth time, slapping each other's backs with a "bro!" and arguing like camp counsellors over how to save their precious planet of Pandora.

The leap in motion-capture technology between Fire and Ash and its predecessor, The Way of Water, isn't quite as impressive - though, at this point, the ability to pick up on an actor's microexpressions is starting to make it look as if real people have been caked in prosthetics. And, whether in the hand-to-hand combat, the dragon-like banshees, or the return of the (fan favourite) tattooed, whale-like tulkun, there's an endless supply of dynamic camerawork - diving shots, spinning shots, POV shots, tight close-ups in a mix between the standard 24fps and the crisper 48fps.