Avatar The Way of Water opens on Friday, 12.16. The very first NYC elite-critic screening happens on Tuesday, December 6th; there’s a subsequent all-media screening on Monday, 12.12.

Critical Drinker: “As hard as I try, I just can’t escape the feeling that recreating the success of the original Avatar [will be] like trying to capture lightning in a bottle…all the elements that came together to make the first film a success are either absent or compromised now, and it’s facing a hell of a battle to earn that $2 billion [it needs to break even].

“But [if it works] I’ll be happy to sing its praises and give it all the credit it deserves. At this point I’ll take a generic sci-fi action movie about blue alien cat people, made by a guy who seems to actually care about his craft….[I’ll take this] over basically anything being shat up by Marvel these days.”

Singer-actress Irene Cara, the New York City wunderkind who popped through as a Fame costar in 1980 and later sang the Flashdance anthem (“Flashdance…What a Feeling”), has passed at age 63. I’m very, very sorry. Her magical five-year breakout period (’79 to ”83) happened between ages 19 and 23.

Is there anyone who doesn’t regard 63 as an unnaturally young age from which to bid farewell? The reason for Cara’s untimely passing is being kept under wraps, of course. Whenever someone passes too soon the first question that always comes to mind is “what happened?”; the cause eventually leaks out but is never announced in the immediate aftermath. It’s the new obit etiquette.

And yet Elon Musk’s assessment of the current state of things (“woke mind virus”) is essentially correct. I wouldn’t say that civilization is edging towards “suicide”, but I know for a fact that the occasional surges of joy and even transcendence that I got from movies for so many decades have become fewer and farther between over the last six or seven years, and that this is largely due to (I need to occasionally refresh my doomsday terminology) the influence of the Maple Street seed pod monsters, and the chickenshit corporates who are afraid to show a little backbone.

It’s an occasion for a kind of mourning (i.e., my own) when a film that sent me fleeing after 90 minutes has bagged $321,770,596 domestic and $279,200,000 overseas for a total of $600 million and change.

I know exactly how it feels when a film is doing everything just right and thereby building trust and affection with an audience. Or at least is up to something exceptional. I’ve experienced it hundreds of times over decades, and the first 90 minutes of Wakanda Forever (I couldn’t tolerate any more than that) definitely wasn’t doing this. A director friend told me “you missed the best part”, ands I’ve no reason to think otherwise. But dear God in heaven…who are we? What is our life when an obviously mediocre film like this is celebrated as a great “success”?

The over-praising of The Fabelmans among mainstream media types…what is there to say except “what else is new”? We’re all familiar with the industry-wide instinct to kowtow to the lore of Steven Spielberg-directed films…a syndrome that’s been locked into the psychological Hollywood bloodstream for several decades, as natural and inevitable as a mountain stream or even the weather.

It’s not that The Fabelmans is a bad film — of course not! It’s a fairly good one in several respects, but you also have to qualify this with a sensible “yes, okay but calm down.” I’ve said this two or three times, but a truly fair-minded, non-obsequious opinion would have to acknowledge that the saga of Spielberg’s teenage years (mostly Phoenix, some Saratoga) is neither boring nor hugely interesting. It’s diverting in an on-the-nose, broadly performed way, but it mainly boils down to “decent with three pop-throughs — the Judd Hirsch rant, filming the Nazi war flick in the Arizona desert, and John Ford lecturing 17-year-old Steven about horizon lines.”

Face it — that’s what The Fabelmans is. It’s not a put-down to call it “good enough” or “reasonably decent.” And Matt Patches is correct — the major roles (including Ford at the end) could have been eccentrically performed by Eddie Murphy in white-person makeup.

Chris Evangelista is also spot-on about The Fabelmans 2. I would truly love to see Spielberg’s struggling years at Universal dramatized — Amblin, directing that Night Gallery episode with Joan Crawford, SS bonding with his “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” colleagues, filming Duel and then The Sugarland Express.

This would have to be followed, of course, by The Fabelmans 3, which would cover the glory years of ’74 through ’82 — the making of Jaws, Close Encounters, 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T..

Steven Spielberg discusses his new film, The Fabelmans, with fellow director Paul Thomas Anderson in a Q&A at the DGA theater in Los Angeles.https://t.co/cVXYZxSizi

— Cinephilia & Beyond (@CCinephilia) November 25, 2022

Jesus. This guy is definitely up for asshole of the year. And it is a very short leap to see how he drive his son to this heinous, self-loathing crime. https://t.co/smnq4FkNKz

— David Poland (@DavidPoland) November 24, 2022

I’m sorry but this is my idea of a Thanksgiving movie. I haven’t re-watched it in 32 years. Gotta do that today or at least over the weekend.

Wiki excerpt: “Abel Ferrara’s King of New York was shot entirely in and around New York City. According to Ferrara, then-owner Donald Trump gave him permission to film at the Plaza Hotel at no charge, on the condition that Walken would pose for a photograph with Ivana Trump, who was a fan of the actor.”