What to watch: ‘Avatar’ sequel rekindles a sense of wonder, ‘Kindred’ brings book to life, and more
Avatar: The Way of Water
Rated PG-13, 3 hour 12 minutes, in theaters now
“Avatar” took a very basic story and adorned it with eye-popping spectacle, in a way that made the film a must-see commodity, and a record-breaking hit in the process. Thirteen years later, braving much different theatrical tides, director James Cameron has done it again with “Avatar: The Way of Water,” a state-of-the-art exercise that rekindles that sense of wonder and demands to be seen by anyone with lingering interest in watching movies in theaters.
Although Cameron (who shares script credit with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver) has already announced plans for multiple “Avatar” sequels, the filmmaker has thrown so much technical wizardry, scope and scale into this 190-minute epic that one gets the impression he approached directing it as if there might never be another, leaving everything on the field — or rather, the waves.
In addition, “The Way of Water” introduces an entirely new Na’vi subculture of reef people, with their own evolutionary adaptations and remarkable fauna with which they bond, wedding the original to Cameron’s well-documented love of the ocean and its exploration, an impulse he’s been indulging since “Titanic” a quarter-century ago.
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Tina Rowden/FX/TNS
Mallori Johnson stars as Dana in "Kindred." (Tina Rowden/FX/TNS)
Kindred
Rated TV-MA, ~1 hour, Available on Hulu
Actress Mallori Johnson first encountered the work of writer Octavia Butler when she read “Fledgling,” a novel about a young Black vampire. It was the summer before she left home for the Julliard School in New York City.
“I just fell in love with the fact that she was able to create these kinds of fantastical, magical worlds that centered on Black people,” says Johnson, who grew up in San Diego. “That was something that I had never heard or experienced before, so that was really exciting.”
A year or two later, Johnson’s mom gave her a copy of “Kindred,” another novel by the late Pasadena-based writer, and that book – in which a young Black woman suddenly and unpredictably begins to time-travel between present-day Los Angeles and a slave plantation in the antebellum South – had an even bigger impact.
“I fell in love with her intellect, and what she set out to do with the story,” Johnson says.
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Philippe Bossé – handout one time use, Netflix
This image released by Netflix shows Noah Centineo as Owen Hendricks, left, and Fivel Stewart as Hannah Copeland in a scene from the series "The Recruit."
The Recruit
Rated TV-MA, ~1 hour, Available on Netflix
There’s a moment in the new Netflix series “ The Recruit,” starring Noah Centineo, when his character, Owen, finds himself in the middle of a shootout.
As he ducks from a hail of bullets, Owen recognizes one of the people working for the other side as a woman he met in a bar. He momentarily forgets about the life-threatening situation at hand and gives a small wave of acknowledgement to her. The woman responds by shooting at him. How rude!
It’s moments like these that make “The Recruit” an atypical CIA drama. Yes, Centineo’s Owen is a CIA employee who finds himself in the field à la Jack Ryan, but instead of immediately knowing what to do and how to defend himself, this CIA employee is an attorney who is immediately in over his head.
“That’s a differentiation between our show, ‘The Recruit’ and many other spy genre shows and films,” said Centineo. “Usually, the lead is an accomplished spy, you know, someone that is very experienced and very good at what they do.” Owen, he says, is “fresh out of law school.”
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