Kandahar

Actors: Gerard Butler, Ali Fazal, Navid Negahban, Bahador Foladi, Nina Toussaint-White, Tom Rhys Harries, Vassilis Koukalani, Mark Arnold, Corey Johnson, Travis Fimmel

Rating: 7 out of 10, Gerard Butler running around with lots of explosions going on around him, again. I hadn’t heard much about this but it’s a pretty taut action flick. Butler plays a CIA contractor in Iran helping take down an Iranian nuclear facility. The Iranians are not pleased and take exception to his efforts, especially after they learn his identity from a newspaper writer and that he’s hanging out in nearby Afghanistan. The bulk of the movie has Butler and his Afghani translator making their away across Taliban controlled Afghanistan with everybody, and I mean everybody, trying to kill them. It’s a very engaging story with some real humanity between the two. Butler does so well in these type roles and he delivers again.

MVP: Negahban as Mo the translators, so much depth

Sisu

Actors: Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Jack Doolan, Mimosa Willamo and Onni Tommila

Rating: 10 out of 10, This is one case where the preview lives up to the final product. Sisu is just flat, psychotically great. A former Finnish commando who retired to mine gold is trying to make his way to the bank with his gold when he runs across a German SS unit retreating through Lapland near the end of WW2. The Nazis make the mistake of trying to take the gold away from him. He turns out to be the Finnish version of John Wick and is basically unkillable, although Nazis try and try. This is not a movie for the faint of heart as the German deaths range from comically funny to incredibly brutal. There was also a barbed wire suturing session I could have done without. A surpassingly great movie, beautifully shot in the north of Finland with a superb cast, especially the lead actor. So good.

MVP: Tommila as the incredibly dangerous and inventive Koschei

Avatar The Way of Water

Actors: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Giovanni Ribisi, Dileep Rao, Matt Gerald, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet

Rating: 10 out of 10, I was wondering if all the time and effort Cameron spent on this sequel would be worth it. It is, and then some. I should have known after the revelation that was Terminator 2 but all the many years of work were readily apparent on the screen as we returned to Pandora. On Pandora no one is ever really, seriously dead so both Sigourney Weaver and the lead bad guy return, in spades. It’s a great adventure taking place 15 years after the original with the Na'vi now faced with a determined and upgunned human invasion. Jake takes his family to supposed safety with an ocean based clan. He’s faced with fighting a guerilla war as well as teenaged offspring, learning one is much tougher than the other. The persistent message of living in harmony with their natural world is still present but not as overpowering as the first film. The technology is so seamless and impressive that you really forget this was all generated on a computer and completely suspend disbelief. A truly massive achievement.

MVP: Saldana as Neytiri who I would not want to have pissed off at me