Avatar (out 26 April 10, Cert. 12)

Stephen Lang, Wes Studi, Joel David Moore, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Matt Gerald, Michelle Rodriguez, dir. James Cameron, 2009, cert. 12

MonkeyScore: 68%

Ex-Marine Jake, a paraplegic war veteran, finds himself thrust into hostilities on Pandora, a distant planet filled with exotic life forms. As an Avatar, a human consciousness in an alien body, he finds himself torn between two worlds in a desperate fight for his own survival and that of the indigenous people.

One cannot stress just how beautiful this film is, and it really has to be seen. It is so stunning that even watching the DVD on a basic TV will blow your mind - so Blu-Ray with a proper hi-def TV is the dog's cojones. The film is gorgeous to look at from start to finish, and is bound to make you gasp, or even feel dizzy - particularly if you have issues with height. The Best Achievement in Art Direction, Visual Effects and Cinematography could not have gone to a more deserving picture at this year's Oscars. Avatar did not, however, win Best Motion Picture Of The Year, which seems just as right. The visual candy cannot deter from the fact that the story has been heard before, and in fact to some degree has already won a Best Motion Picture Oscar: the year was 1990 and the film was called Dances With Wolves. There are too many similarities between the two pictures to catalogue here, even though the Sioux didn't win (nor were they blue.) Still, Avatar is a visual feast that will set the standard for big budget sci-fi productions for years to come.