DOMESTIC VIOLENCE; THE MOODY BLUES

Opening today:

The Housemaid--Desperate for a job, Millie, played by Sydney Sweeney, applies as a maid to a rich young housewife and Mom, Nina, living in a spacious Long Island manse. At first Nina (Amanda Seyfried) is impossibly nice, friendly and welcoming, but within a day of starting the gig, it's clear she's given to scary acting out. Her hubby Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) is both hunkalicious and solicitously apologetic for his wife's behavior, while their daughter Cece  (Indiana Elle) is aloof, to say the least. There's a creepy groundskeeper (Michele Morrone) skulking around as well, glaring at Millie but not speaking.

Also, the door to Millie's snug little A-frame garret bedroom locks from the outside, not from the inside.

All of this would be more than enough for most people to see that they should get the hell out while the getting is good on day one. But director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshire, adapting the smash 2022 novel by Frieda McFadden, give Millie understandable reasons to stay in her place. Both Nina's outbursts and the attraction between Millie and Andrew escalate.

This feels something like a contemporary spin on the "hag horror" classics of the '60s, like Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and also of later domestic thrillers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Single White Female. Feig tightens the tension skillfully and then, in the last third or so of the film, executes a pretty good twist.

It's probably a hair longer than it needs to be, and it's hard to say how much scrutiny the plot logic could bear. But it's a polished production, the three leads are improbably pretty, and the rip-snorting gothic comeuppances of the homestretch are satisfying. I understand it's hard to get good help these days, but on balance, this Housemaid gets a good letter of reference.

Then again, before I start complaining that The Housemaid is too long, maybe I should consider it in comparison to...

Avatar: Fire and Ash--On the long list of James Cameron's strengths as a filmmaker, knowing when to quit is notably absent. Toward the end of Cameron's 1994 True Lies, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis kiss while a mushroom cloud erupts in the distance behind them. Most directors would grasp that this meant the movie was over; Cameron insisted on one last grapple on a harrier jet. He's like a little kid who wants to keep playing army when it's time to go home for dinner.

This trait--and I'm clearly in the minority for considering it a weakness--reaches an apex in this third Avatar epic, Avatar: Fire and Ash, which runs to well over three hours, well over an hour longer than Citizen Kane. It's the next clash between exploitative colonizing humans and the Na'vi, the tall, tailed, blue, holistic, new-agey inhabitants of the lush, idyllic distant world Pandora. I'd say it was the climactic clash, but apparently two more sequels are planned.

As someone who liked but didn't love the first Avatar, back in 2009, and also as one who tends to get grumpier the longer a movie runs over two hours, I must admit I wasn't the ideal target audience for this. So perhaps it carries extra weight when I say that I found it...well, too long, certainly, but still a compelling sci-fi spectacle, loaded with grand scenes that recall sources as venerable as the New and Old Testaments.

The dialogue isn't poetry ("Dude, they're fighting!") but the dialogue isn't the point; the shimmering, immersive visuals and mythic yarnspinning are what the movie is for. In the last hour or so I was fully invested; I wanted to see the good guys win and the bad guys lose.

Among many others, Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver--particularly good as a starry-eyed young Na'vi--lend their voices and motion-capture presences to the movie; Giovanni Ribisi, Jemaine Clement and Edie Falco are amusing among the humans. But easily the most striking performance is by Oona Chaplin as Varang, a hissing warrior Na'vi who sides with the earthlings against our heroes. She's fierce and seductive.

The Na'vi always remind me of blue-skinned Anne Coulters; nevertheless they have a certain glamour and sexiness. My favorite Na've trait was their ears; I love how they move expressively when they speak, or even change expression. If there was an Oscar for best ears, Fire and Ash would be a shoo-in.