‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Leans Too Hard on CGI Spectacle
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There are roughly 47,000—oh, wait, a new Netflix Original just dropped; make that 47,001—TV shows and movies coming out each week. At Obsessed, we consider it our social duty to help you see the best and skip the rest.
We’ve already got a variety of in-depth, exclusive coverage on all of your streaming favorites and new releases, but sometimes what you’re looking for is a simple Do or Don’t. That’s why we created See/Skip, to tell you exactly what our writers think you should See and what you can Skip from the past week’s crowded entertainment landscape.
Skip: Avatar: The Way of Water
Avatar: The Way of Water is gorgeously rendered, cerulean blue fever dream. And if you look past all that artifice, the film itself is cloying and distant, with clunky dialogue and little impact to enhance the franchise’s already waning cultural footprint.
Here’s Nick Schager’s’ take:
“Underestimating Avatar’s financial potential would be a fool’s game. But creatively speaking, The Way of Water (Dec. 16, in theaters) is of a piece with its predecessor, a would-be epic of boundary-pushing digi-grandeur in service of Pocahontas-style us-vs-them mush. There’s something absurdly ironic about Cameron continuing to peddle fantasies about nature-attuned, highly spiritual, indigenous people gallantly slaying the forces of advanced civilization via a wholly artificial affair that—produced by Disney with the priciest cine-gadgets available—is literally the Most Modern Movie Ever.
Why ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Isn’t Worth the 13-Year Wait
Alas, anyone hoping for such self-awareness, or even the slightest sense of humor, will be sorely disappointed. The Oscar winner’s latest does nothing if not take itself oh-so-seriously, be it with regards to its endless barrage of sound and fury or its puffed-up narrative about Pandora’s Na’vi resuming their good fight against villainous humanity.
The Way of Water looks expensive and groundbreaking, while simultaneously feeling forced and without a single memorable vision. That’s a serious shortcoming given that its plot is a leaden chore marked by familiar conflict, tedious “world-building,” and Cameron’s typically clunky dialogue.”
Noah Centineo in The Recruit.
Skip: The Recruit
The Recruit is an unfortunate use of Noah Centineo’s intrinsic himbo charm. With Daniel Craig exiting Bond, there’s a hole in the market for hot male espionage! One that won’t be filled by this tonally inconsistent, overly serious dud. Centine-oh-no!
Here’s Kyndall Cunningham’s take:
“Ben Affleck hit the nail on the head when he compared Netflix's process of creating original content to “an assembly line,” while promoting his and Matt Damon’s new production company Artists Equity. The Oscar winner was, of course, referring to the fact that Netflix’s output is subject to rigorous testing based on user behavior and even a secret ‘preview club.’ While most, if not all, streamers utilize these analytics, Netflix’s uber data-driven approach has notably resulted in an overwhelming mass of movies and television shows that usually suck. It’s all the more disappointing when these projects involve exciting, underrated talent. (Leighton Meester, I will avenge you!)
Netflix’s ‘The Recruit’ Completely Wastes Noah Centineo’s Himbo Charm
The latest television show to come down Netflix’s lackluster conveyor belt is the new spy-action series The Recruit, out today. Created by Alexi Hawley, the show stars To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before actor Noah Centineo as newly hired CIA lawyer Owen Hendricks, whose seemingly humdrum job takes him on an unexpectedly wild and dangerous mission. This brand of male-led espionage thriller has been made a million times before, including the 2003 Al Pacino and Colin Farrell joint called The Recruit. And yet, this series of the same name has nothing new to add to the genre or anything insightful to say about the myriad cliches it presents. It doesn’t even suffice as a good old-fashioned love letter to the Jason Bournes and Agent Cody Bankses of yore.
Maxim Swinton as Solly Fleishman, Jesse Eisenberg as Toby Fleishman, Claire Danes as Rachel Fleishman, Meara Mahoney Gross as Hannah Fleishman in Fleishman Is in Trouble.
See: Fleishman Is in Trouble
Fleishman Is in Trouble continues its run as one of the most fascinating adapted series of the year with a party sequence that’s a masterclass in televised character studies.
Here’s Fletcher Peters’ take:
“Party scenes make up most of my favorite moments in both TV and movie history. Big parties in classic teen flicks like Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, Mean Girls, Euphoria, and Booksmart are so fetch. The intimate dance sequences in Lovers Rock blew me away. Who could forget the pool jumping scene in La La Land? And, of course, there’s my personal favorite: the ‘expectations vs. reality’ split screen in 500 Days of Summer.
‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ Is the Best New TV Show of the Year
Fleishman Is in Trouble has entered the party hall of fame with its most recent episode, “This Is My Enjoyment.” The title even refers to the party sequence. For most of the FX on Hulu series so far, we’ve witnessed a mosaic of Toby Fleishman’s (Jesse Eisenberg) suffering—from divorcing his wife Rachel (Claire Danes), to her disappearance, to losing a promotion at work. But finally, with this party scene, we get to witness Toby smiling. Wild!”
Mallori Johnson in the FX series Kindred.
Skip: Kindred
Kindred bungles the first screen adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s seminal works, making baffling choices that deviate from Butler’s novel for horrifically superficial explorations of racism and shockingly lousy sci-fi.
Here’s Allegra Frank’s take:
“Octavia E. Butler didn’t live to see any of her seminal science fiction works transition from page to screen. Still, after her untimely death in 2006, at age 58, her legacy has only grown in influence and import; her Afro-futuristic touches and subversions of the classically white male sci-fi canon continue to be themselves canonized. Which is why it’s a bit surprising that it’s taken this long for one of her classic books to be adapted—and extra disappointing that it’s such a misfire.
‘Kindred’ Bungles Everything Beautiful About Octavia E. Butler’s Sci-Fi Masterpiece
Kindred is a gripping story that mixes racial politics, historical fiction, and gender dynamics, with an enticing time-travel mystery at the center. Decades of acclaim made Kindred an obvious candidate for the first Butler adaptation. But Hulu’s take on Kindred, whose eight-episode first season drops all at once Dec. 13, is likely not what Butler fans have clamored for. The show, created by playwright Branden Jacobs Jenkins, plops Butler’s themes into a centrifuge and spits out a gray, cold, unappealing mush of an eight-hour drama. Bereft of the observational intimacy that made Dana’s story in the novel so heart-wrenching and shocking, this version of Butler’s story is a modern-day mystery-thriller—with a superficial exploration of racism for good (?) measure.”
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