"Amazing," "wonderful," "highly entertaining" are among the adjectives Houston film buffs are using to praise innovative technical achievements and humanistic story behind director James Cameron's high-tech fantasy "Avatar."

The comments reflect those of a growing legion of fans and critics throughout the world who have catapulted the film to its fifth straight week at the top of the box office charts.

The glowing accolades also mirror the sentiment of the Hollywood Foreign Press Corps, which gave it the Golden Globe nod for Best Motion Picture Drama on Sunday night, Jan. 17.

Retired newspaper editor Carol Dobbs in her mid-60s, and 57- year-old freelance geologist Chris Stiteler are older than the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the bedrock of the film's most represented ticket holders.

But Dobbs said the awe that the movie inspired in her, as she watched through three-dimensional glasses soon after its Houston release, transcended all boundaries.

"I looked forward to seeing the movie because I had read about the special effects James Cameron developed for this film," Dobbs said. "I saw it in high-definition 3-D, and I was amazed at the things that seemed to be coming at me from the screen."

She said she felt as if she were part of the film.

The newly released U.S. comedy "It's Complicated" starring Meryl Streep was second with 36.51

"It was like I was there, going through the jungle, on the spaceship, with the actors," Dobbs said.

In her Dec. 24 column, CultureMap Houston (http://culturemap. com) writer Caroline Gallay said in her critique of the film that she had tried -- and failed -- to find fault during the nearly three hours it took to watch it.

"Visually, it is simply the most beautiful movie you've ever seen," she wrote. "I cried, I jumped in my seat, I probably drooled. It was, hands down, the best movie I have seen in years. I imagine my parents felt the same way the first time they saw Star Wars."

Rick Ferguson, Houston Film Commission's executive director, pointed out that the film is not only setting attendance records in the theaters, but was also used in the action DVD game of the same name, an increasingly popular technique he called "two-in-one " filming.

Stiteler, an avid movie fan and freelance geologist who works with oil companies, said that the high-tech wizardry merely supports a story with universal appeal.

"The technical achievements support it, but it's the story that makes it... The characters you really care about, that give you people you root for or against," said Stiteler, 57. "But the animation is so good you tend to forget it's animated. The characters come through. It's state-of-the-art technology merged with a great story."

Having a hero protagonist that rises above his limitations -- bound to a wheelchair from some previous unnamed military skirmish -- resonates with Americans, he said.

"To rise above your circumstances, above infirmities, by being in harmony with other people and places around the world is a spiritual aspect, the belief that we are all part of a great whatever, some eternal, rational spirit," Stiteler said. "Only in this movie (unlike Star Wars) it's not called 'the force.'"

It is this environmentally sound spirit, he said, that defends itself against the film's antagonists -- a military machine of invading soldiers and misguided scientists who serve a greedy, corporate world.

In a replay of American history -- particularly the country's battles against Native Americans and wars in Vietnam and Iraq -- the invaders are arrogantly bent on destroying the harmonious, native blue planetary beings in order to secure their planet's natural resources.

Dobbs and Stiteler said they didn't find the anti-war, anti- corporate, pro-environment messages, while obvious, to be so overbearing to the point of being preachy.

"It all comes together in a beautiful way," Stiteler said. "And the ride is a good one."