Avatar (James Cameron) - 2009 (3-D)

This is the movie of the year and of the decade.  For its special effects, this is the movie by which all others will be judged for many years.  In the year 2154, a mining company and its private army has taken the Bush Doctrine to outer space.  The planet (Pandora) is rich with the extremely valuable upsidaisium (unobtainium).  Pandora is the dangerous paradise and home of the ten-foot-tall blue people who are somehow connected to the trees.  Avatars (dreamwalkers) are the alien clones designed by well-meaning scientists to befriend the blue people.  More than anything else, this movie attempts to explain why the people of Pandora, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were not overjoyed by the presence of the Western military-industrial complex in their forests. [JAM 12/18/2009]