“You are not in Kansas anymore. You are on Pandora.”

It’s here. The movie we’ve been told is going to redefine motion pictures forever. The movie that’s going to rock our faces off. Well, I have been rocked, although my face has been left intact. Make of that what you will.

For me, Avatar kind of flew in under the radar. I heard a few things at Comic-Con, mostly about this movie James Cameron had spent years and piles of money on that wasn’t creating as much buzz as people were hoping it would. After that, it disappeared again. Every now and then I would read a story about someone who had seen the movie. Someone who’s brother’s sister’s ex-boyfriend had been a production assistant, and although they hadn’t seen the entire movie they felt more than qualified to say that Avatar would be the biggest piece of sh*t ever committed to film and may God help James Cameron’s soul. So, I did what every good fanboy should do in similar situations: I lowered my expectations. Of course I’d be there opening day. If the movie was great, well, great. If not, I still have Sherlock Holmes to look forward to.

Does Avatar live up to all the hype? Yes and no. The special effects are without a doubt the best I’ve ever seen. Like The Matrix before it, it’s set the bar at a new high, although I don’t think we’ll be forced to endure the hundred bad rip-offs the way we were after the world discovered Bullet Time. Still, James Cameron has brought us all a giant step closer to the day when pictures and video will no longer be admissible as court evidence. When I can use Photoshop and Cameron’s fancy new 3D cameras to make it look like it was my brother who knocked off that Piggly Wiggly, you know we’re all in trouble.

But special effects aside, there’s nothing revolutionary about Avatar. The movie’s plot is far from original. Man is sent into hostile territory to fight against savage natives, and in the process comes to empathize with and consider himself one of them. A lot of the movie’s dialogue borders on cringe-worthy (You are not in Kansas anymore!). Also, Michelle Rodriguez is in the movie, and I think audiences are still trying to figure out whether she’s an actress or not.

Now, saying that there’s nothing revolutionary about Avatar doesn’t mean that the movie wasn’t awesome. I think in that in attempting to tell the greatest story ever told, James Cameron gave us one of the most solid sci-fi action films we’ve seen in the last decade. At a hefty two hours and forty minutes, you never once feel like the story’s dragging. Much of the first hour is spent setting things up, explaining who everyone is and what they’re doing on Pandora in the first place. But what might seem slow in the beginning is all paid off later in the film, and leaves you with plenty of those, “Oooooohh. I get it” moments.

The actors, small ensemble that they are, have real chemistry. After watching him stumble around in Terminator: Salvation, I think there might be hope yet for Sam Worthington. While he and the other main characters all spend more than half the movie rendered in CGI, I was surprised at how they were able to make me connect to a bunch of 7-foot tall zebra people. Actually, I was surprised at how emotional the movie was overall. I’m not spoiling anything when I say that Avatar’s climax centers on a battle royal between Giovanni Rabisi, the space marines and the Na’vi, and the lead-up and payoff to all that really sucks you in. I don’t want to say that there were parts of the film where I had to swallow back a lump in my throat, so I won’t.

If I could describe the movie in a word, it would be balanced. Avatar really is a movie that has it all, that perfect blend of emotion and action. And while the core of Cameron’s story doesn’t take us anywhere new, everything else is so well put together that it more than makes up for it. The humans, the Na’vi, and their battle over Pandora is so visually stunning and fleshed-out that you can’t help but be sucked in by it. Avatar is definitely a standout in a year that really hasn’t had a clear winner. The movie isn’t perfect, but it isn’t too far off.

“We’re Jedi. We don’t fight with guns, we fight with our minds.”

The Men Who Stare at Goats is one of those movies you see a commercial for a couple of weeks before it’s released. It has some big names attached, so after you see it you say, “Hmm. Might have to check that one out.” You go the movies by yourself, because hey, you like to do that every now and then. That night at home, your wife asks you what you did that day, and you reply without even looking away from the TV, “Uhh…oh yeah. I saw that movie. The goats one.”

Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a reporter who, after a messy separation with his wife, has come to the Middle East, not only to report on the war, but to prove to himself that he has what it takes to do it. Wilton finds more than he bargained for when he meets Lyn Cassady (Clooney), who tells him that he was once part of a top secret military unit involved in psychic warfare. Wilton goes into Iraq with Cassady on a mission to find Bill Django (Bridges), Cassady’s former commander and the founder of the Army’s psychic battalion.

To me, The Men Who Stare at Goats has a lot in common with the The Informant (which you may or may not remember). Both are lighthearted, quirky comedies, and both are pretty deadpan in their presentation. I think Goats works out better in the end because you understand why it’s a comedy. The thought that the Army would actually invest money and resources into creating psychic soldiers — or as Jeff Bridges calls them, warrior-monks — is ridiculous. Another reason the movie is like The Informant is because of how forgettable it is. After seeing it and telling your friends that it was pretty funny, you’re probably not going to think about it much more, if at all. Which is a shame because, judging from the trailers, this is a movie I felt should have been bigger.

Clooney turns in a solid performance. His character is funny without coming off as a borderline schizophrenic (Burn After Reading?). Ewan McGregor is pretty solid himself, although it takes you a little big to get used to him talking in an American accent. One of the funniest parts about his role is the fact that the movie keeps making references to Jedis. I remembered, “Oh yeah. He was in Star Wars. I had forgotten about that because of how much the prequels sucked.”

Kevin Spacey works really well as Kevin Spacey. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great actor but his role here is so small I almost wonder why he did the movie at all. Maybe it’s that after you make a certain amount of money, you can start taking on roles just ’cause. I’d say that Jeff Bridges as psychedelic love child Bill Django really makes the movie. Watching Bridges prance around with his hippie necklaces and ponytail while tripping on LSD is going to be fun for anyone, not the least because of the fond memories of The Big Lebowski it brings back.

The movie is funny. It’s well-acted. Why would it be forgettable? I think that in the end it’s because the movie doesn’t really know what to do with itself. The plot meanders throughout and only seems to finally settle on something because, damn, it’s been 90 minutes already and we need to start wrapping this thing up. At first we’re focused on McGregor and his desire to prove himself as a man, then we settle on Clooney and his role in the Army, and finally we’re focusing on Bridges, who gets a chance at redeeming himself after being drummed out of the military. It’s not a lot to keep track of, just not what you were expecting.

I liked this movie. It’s funny and I had a good time with it. But in the end it seems more like a placeholder that’ll be buried by the masses rushing out to see 2012 and The Fantastic Mr. Fox next weekend. If you’re looking to avoid the crowds, check this one out. I doubt that the theater will be packed. B