Speculative Musings

Movie Review: Alita: Battle Angel

My wife and I caught an advance screening (2 weeks early) of the James Cameron/Robert Rodriguez teamup sci-fi blockbuster extravaganza “Alita: Battle Angel.” We were really, really lucky because we had the opportunity to catch the IMAX 3D test screening. This kind of movie was made for IMAX 3D viewing.

Let’s go ahead and get all of that out of the way.

The effects crew did a pretty remarkable job here. It has an appropriate Hollywood effects budget for the ambition of the production, and you can tell that no detail was too unimportant here. The scale of Iron City and the utopia above is on full display. The melding of real actors and sets with motion-captured actors is flawless and well done. The action scenes are some of the best filmed. You can tell that the director Robert Rodriguez felt in his element during these. Gratuitous violence is pretty much his main hallmark in a wide range of cinematic history. Robert is the guy who did Desperado, Dusk till Dawn, Sin City, etc. He’s been a frequent collaborator with Tarantino, and if you’re a fan of that genre (and I am), then you’re going to enjoy a lot of the movie.

This movie has a lot of violence, but the gore aspect is hard to really quantify. The majority of the characters that engage in combat scenes are cyborgs and the damage to parts and persons is overwhelmingly done to plastic, metal, and non-human parts of the body. You rarely see characters wince in pain. You often can’t tell if characters die. In fact, characters are so robust here that they frequently survive if nothing is left of them but their heads. This comes up as important in this film, and if the film does well enough to get sequels, I’m absolutely certain that the rest of the series will have plot elements that require this. A side effect of the near indestructibility of humanity and the absolutely frenetic pace of the battle scenes is that emotional impact is really hard to come by. My wife and I discussed scenes that we believed were meant to be emotional pivot points of the film that had very blunted impact. It didn’t kill the movie or anything, but it almost left me scratching my head about why certain things weren’t just cut from the movie and left alone.

And this is really the only problem the movie has. It is trying to do so much to fill in world building that the emotional arc of characters is often muted. There’s a dog scene in this movie that I’m sure was supposed to have a certain impact, but my wife and I discussed this and we felt like it had been so poorly foreshadowed and emotionally anchored in our minds that it might as well have been left out of the film. Characters are stabbed and destroyed so often that unless they have a weird facial expression or a completely destroyed face, you can’t tell if you’re really looking at a dead character or a character that is just at a low point that may recover. And it’s not happening a few times in the film. It’s happening dozens of times an hour. You’ll understand what I’m talking about when you watch the film: which, btw, I think you definitely should.

This script is obviously a James Cameron script, but with his filmmaking involvement mostly on the periphery. There are social issues here. There are technology issues. There is a bit of a weak love plot, and a lot of missed potential in the emotion impact of many scenes (probably 7-8). But there are a LOT of scenes between all that, and the movie has so much fast-paced, devastating action that you’re not going to feel “robbed” or upset about it. You’re likely to just think “man, if they would have just had a dramatic pause for a few seconds, that might have been a more effective scene” or “if they would have just focused on the conflict between Alita and Hugo’s activities for half the film and had them meet up in more of a less deliberately thrown together way, this would have had a lot more impact on my feelings.”

The characters here are strong and mostly developed. The lead character is very personable, and you’ll like her. There is some talent wasted here, but it’s mostly because of the pacing. Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali show what the world has done to capitalistic intentions. Christoph Waltz did what he could to fill so many different supportive roles for Alita, but there really wasn’t enough time to develop him further and show his conflicts more (e.g, the rush between soft and hard body–don’t want to give too much away here). But again, these are not completely lost moments. These are just less impactful moments than they could have been for me and my wife as we watched and discussed later. I mean a central motivator and anchor point for Christoph’s character is sort of mowed through like lightning. If you blink, you’ll miss it, and you will mostly use your imagination to understand why he’s helping Alita and try not to focus too hard on exactly what the character motivations were that caused it. It’s sort of random.

In my opinion, this is a film worth seeing and pretty solidly in the 4/5 category. I’ll probably see it in IMAX again as the 3D, sound, and action are absolutely what the format is for. However, the 1 star missing here is for what might have been with a movie that focused on the first 3/4 of the film and didn’t try to force so much of the manga source into so short of a movie. There are misfires here. And if the movie doesn’t make back its budget and marketing (200M baseline before marketing, it seems, so probably 600-800M or so to get a solid greenlight and building fan base), then you might as well throw out another star here because if the series ends with this movie, it’s a very hollow ending. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen because there’s a lot more story to tell here (and I’m not an Alita comics fan, I just see where this should be going and it’s a conversation our society should be engaging in).

Movie Review: Hereditary

I haven’t done a movie review in a while. I guess I’ve just been kind of busy, but not so busy that I’ve stopped going to the movies every week or two! We did manage to catch the new Avengers and Deadpool. Solo. Ocean’s 8. Black Panther. Etc. I didn’t really feel the need to post anything about those movies. Well, my wife and I saw a completely different movie this weekend, and I figured it might be time to break out the old movie review post again.

You probably haven’t heard much about Hereditary. It kind of flew under my radar, likely because I tend to laugh through horror films and it drives my wife nuts. She wanted to see this one really badly though. She wanted to be scared, and on that, Hereditary delivered. So, what is the film and why might you want to see it?

In many ways, Hereditary is very derivative. There’s nothing you will see here that you haven’t seen before in terms of content, but the way it is presented to you is pretty unique. It’s a slow-building horror that really walks you through the strangeness of the family and how something insidious springs out of it. There are multiple genuine surprises here that I did not see coming (and that make sense), so that always elevates my score.

The movie teases you with ominous normalcy, and then something that pulls at a more primal part of you. If you’re really getting into the movie, it totally works. Do not come to this movie expecting gore throughout, constant high-pitched noises and other pervasive cheap tricks. This is a pretty well-crafted movie–though I sort of wish the ending had been a bit different. I think a different ending that had been moving toward more uniqueness, rather than commonality with other films in the genre, would have helped set this apart. I had a similar feeling at the end of A Quiet Place. I still liked both films very much, but man, they each went from unique and novel films to a standard ending really quickly.

Anyway, because my wife was so amped up by Hereditary, I ended up having a lot of fun during and after the movie. I began making extra clicking noises with my tongue during the film in tense moments, just to mess with her and other people around me. I continued to do this in the car, at a restaurant, etc. I mean, why stop there? I would say definitely watch this one with a friend or loved one because these kinds of films are much better in a shared social experience with someone you can talk with about it.

If I have to rate the film, it’s probably a 4/5. It’s definitely the kind of horror movie I can appreciate. I would rank A Quiet Place similarly if you haven’t seen that one yet, btw. They’re both definitely worth watching, and they both really only lose that point in the last 30 minutes or so of each film. These movies aren’t really made for me though, and I think classic horror fans would probably give both of these 5/5. They’re well made movies!

On an unrelated note, expect a cover reveal for The Dragon Prince soon 😉

Movie Review: The Shape of Water

Guillermo Del Toro has had a string of questionable movies, but I believe I’ve watched them all since Pan’s Labyrinth (which is a fantastic movie, btw, definitely check that out). My wife was really, really interested in seeing this movie, and so, without looking into it at all, we went to our first theater movie of 2018 to see “The Shape of Water.”

I really, really recommend just going to see it without seeing any spoilers. It’s not that the story is especially surprising. It’s mostly predictable once it sets up the characters and the plot moves on at a perfect pace. Humor is here. Love is here. Danger and violence is here. Nudity and sex is here–including some really bold ways to being a movie, I might add. And bold is probably a word I should use liberally in this review.

This is, quite simply, the best movie Del Toro has done since Pan’s Labyrinth. Is it better? I wouldn’t say that. I would say that he’s more accomplished now, and I think he is simply back in form as a dynamic, interesting storyteller of the fantastic. As a somewhat creative person myself, I was so happy to see this movie. The pacing allows you to think about what is going on, and the character and powers and everything else are revealed very intuitively and convincingly. You feel the frailty of the character. You feel the desperate situation that this creature, and really the entire cast of characters, is in.

The atmosphere is interesting and both a throwback and something new. The actors are perfectly cast, and really just a joy to watch–including a pretty convincing and yet sympathetic antagonist. The story ending will leave you satisfied.

My wife and I loved the movie. I would say this is as good a movie experience as I could have expected. Jenny and I both really enjoyed it. I’ll say 5/5 stars. It is a genuine triumph for Del Toro. I hope he gets to make more like this.