6 of THE BEST
Team Empire on the month’s essential movies and TV
PICK OF THE MONTH
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER
OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 192 MINS
Remember when there were those who doubted James mother-Eywa-flipping Cameron? Those who thought the original Avatar had no “cultural impact” and nobody wanted to see big blue aliens pray to a magic space-tree? A couple of billion dollars later, those doubters look like right skxawngs. Frankly, though, Cameron would have been vindicated even if he hadn’t made the third highest-grossing film of all time: even without the much-vaunted high frame rate and 3D glasses, The Way Of Water remains a startling achievement, full of astonishing, ambitiously staged, emotionally driven action and adventure, of the kind that doesn’t so much stretch cinema’s boundaries as break them and reform them anew.