BESM Battle Angel

After ‘Avatar,’ there were rumors circulating among various publications and other media about James Cameron’s next big movie project, an adaptation of the popular Japanese manga ‘Battle Angel Alita.’ That was nearly 10 years ago, and I’ve all but given up because, well, James Cameron movies nowadays are few and far in between (‘Avatar 2’ is taking foreveeeer).  He just won’t make a movie for its own sake anymore, preferring to wait until CGI technology advances and catches up to his visionary genius.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing him at all.  Good things come to those who wait.

 

‘Alita: Battle Angel’ is finally here!  For those unfamiliar with its source material, A:BA is cyberpunk sci-fi about a cyborg girl in the 26th Century who was discarded as trash and recovered by a tinkerer who became a father figure to her.  Slowly regaining her memories, she discovered that she is a bad-ass “Berserker” well versed in the ultimate form of martial arts called “Panzer Kunst” (I know, it makes no sense but it sounds sooooo cool doesn’t it?).  Aside from battling evil cyborg monstrosities as a Hunter-Warrior (bounty hunter) and competing in an arena-style bloodsport called "Motorball" (think Rollerball on steroids played by cyborgs) for entertainment, Alita is just a typical big-eyed teenage girl resembling Christina Ricci.  In a nutshell A:BA is a coming-of-age story about innocence, self-discovery, young love and profound loss.

 

Directed by genre veteran Robert Rodriguez (alas, JC only produced this one), whose past works I greatly admired, A:BA is at its heart a B-movie with the bells and whistles of a blockbuster tent-pole A-movie (reportedly it had a budget of over $200 million).  The cutting-edge CGI is sheer eye-candy (as it should be given its budget), even if the storyline is a deeply familiar one.  I would suggest watching it in IMAX 3D as I did to get the most out of the experience.  Here’s hoping its last scene truly hints at a sequel. 

Grade: A-

She dies again

The surprisingly entertaining Scream-meets-Groundhog Day millennial slasher-comedy ‘Happy Death Day’ made a killing at the 2017 box office, raking in $125 million on a meager budget of $5 million after all the slaughtering is done as part of the low-budget Blumhouse slate.  So now we are treated to ‘Happy Death Day 2U,’ the cool sequel which seeks to cash in on the phenomenal success of its predecessor.  The answer to the million dollar question we're all "dying" to know is, what new twist will H2D2U have in store to make it stand out from the original?

(Still) unknown actors Jessica Rothe (Tree), Israel Broussard (the guy who plays her boyfriend) and his archetypal Asian roommate Phi Vu reprise their roles this second go-round as they find themselves caught not only in a time-loop – like Tree did in in the original – but also in a parallel universe thanks to a quantum reactor science experiment gone awry (or I should say too successful) by the Asian roommate and racing against time to stop the baby-masked killer known as "Babyface" from the first movie, which also happens to be the mascot of the fictional college they attend.  Oh boy, Kyle Hill of ‘Because Science’ is going to have a field day with this one.  Suffice it to say that one should watch this film with a mind wide open not prone to asking too many logical questions.

While I didn’t quite enjoy H2D2U as much as H2D, it didn’t suck either and actually earned a respectable 67 percent fresh Rotten Tomatoes score.  It’s funnier and more sci-fi than the original, and should appeal to those who like BBT and YS (that’s ‘Big Bang Theory’ and ‘Young Sheldon’), even if it isn’t the least bit scary.

Grade: B 

A Very Very Baaaad Boy

Despite the fact that most (if not all) of us find the very notion of young children being capable of evil a revolting one, Hollywood has on occasion delved into precisely this tabooed topic in films such as ‘Village of the Damned,’ ‘The Bad Seed,’ ‘The Omen,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘The Good Son,’ ‘Children of the Corn’ and ‘Better Watch Out.’  Carrying on this time-honored tradition of portraying cherubic angels as the Devil incarnate is ‘The Prodigy,’ which seeks to put a fresh new spin on this divisive subject.

 

In ‘The Prodigy,’ young parents Edward and Sarah had a boy, one whose mental faculties are so advanced and “developed” so fast that it provided this movie its name.  At first, the parents considered themselves lucky that they engendered such a genius offspring, but as the kid grows up they become increasingly horrified by what he’s become and is capable of.  Is Miles inherently evil, or is there some dark supernatural forces at work here?

 

While ‘The Prodigy’ doesn’t exactly proffer anything particularly new to the “evil kid” subgenre of horror, it does manage to impart a pervasive sense of dread and suspense in the viewer, even a jaded horror aficionado like yours truly.  Disturbing, unsettling and utterly uncontemplatable, ‘The Prodigy’ challenges us to accept its inconceivable premise like all those before it: the idea that some children are simply bad to the bone.

Grade: B

 

 

Die Easy

The trailer of Liam Neeson’s latest movie is rather misleading.  With scenes of Neeson exacting revenge on the bad guys responsible for his son’s death in ever more creative ways, the impression I – and no doubt others – got from it was that it’s yet another typical run-of-the-mill cheesy Liam Neeson action potboiler; you know, the kind that Neeson’s made a name for himself in such movies as ‘Taken,’ ‘Non-Stop,’ ‘Run All Night,’ ‘A Walk Among the Tombstones’ and ‘The Commuter.’ So imagine my surprise when I found that ‘Cold Pursuit’ is something else altogether, not to mention being one of Neeson’s best in recent memory.

 

Directed by the virtually unknown Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland, much of what ‘Cold Pursuit’ conveyed is just how frigidly cold its setting (a ski resort town outside of Denver) is.  The movie’s cinematography reminds me of ‘Fargo,’ Joel and Ethan Coen’s Oscar winner starring Frances McDormand over 20 years ago.  In ‘Cold Pursuit,’ Neeson plays mild-mannered and upright “citizen of the year” Nelson Coxman, a snowplow driver content in his humble existence clearing snowdrifts off of highways every morning until his only son died of an apparent heroin overdose.  What follows is a blood-soaked one-man quest for vengeance all the way to the top of a criminal empire.  Or is it?

 

‘Cold Pursuit’ and ‘Fargo’ are similar in more than just their cold climes.  In fact, they share the same DNA in tone and style.  Both are pulpy fun and darkly humorous in the tradition of Quentin Tarantino, with a large cast of dubious but entertaining characters many of whose untimely demise are given a brief on-screen epitaph.  While there’s a familiarity in ‘Cold Pursuit,’ it is a pleasing and enjoyable familiarity that lends this film a certain charm.

Grade: A-

 

The Girl who Learned How to Shoot

‘Miss Bala,’ the 2011 Mexican film by the same name, gets adapted for the English-speaking audience starring “Jane the Virgin” Gina Rodriguez.  I wanted to see the original 2011 version but never got around to it, so now I didn’t have to.  No amount of panning (currently sitting comfortably with a 23 percent RT score, only one percentage point above ‘Serenity’ – see below) by the critics is going to stop me. 

 

In this movie, Rodriguez plays Gloria Fuentes, a young twenty-something makeup artist from La La Land who’s unwillingly swept into the dark and sordid underworld of the drug trade during a visit with her BFF in Tijuana, Mexico.  A stranger in a not-so-strange place, the hapless Latina who was at a party suddenly found herself a captive in indentured servitude to Lino (Ismael Cruz Córdova resembling a younger version of Benicio Del Toro), the magnetic and charismatic leader of the Las Estrellas criminal gang, who’s bold and reckless enough in “lawless” Mexico to try and rub out the corrupt and pervy TJ chief of police in public (which was how the innocent Gloria got into her predicament in the first place).  Among the things she had to do for her new boss were car-bombing DEA safe-houses and working as a mule like Clint Eastwood smuggling drugs across the US-Mexico border (yeah, I know what your dirty little minds are thinking, sorry to disappoint you).

 

As an action/crime thriller, I found ‘Miss Bala’ to be a competent, well-directed movie with an engaging female protagonist.  Like a toned-down PG-13 version of ‘Sicario’ and its sequel, it provides a glimpse of the drug trade below the border as well as a portrait of the desperation and despair of the victims caught up in it.  Gloria’s transformation from helpless victim at the beginning to angel of vengeance in the end was gloriously cathartic, even if the undercurrents of female empowerment were laid on a bit thick.  Or maybe I just like the scenes where she had a red dress on and carried an AR-15 a little too much.

Grade: B 

 

The Imaginary Fisherman

If there’s a prime example of a film that’s DOA before it even hits theatres, Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey’s latest would be it. One would expect that a neo‑noir thriller starring such proven talents as McConaughey and Anne Hathaway as well as a solid supporting cast including Jason Clarke, Diane Lane and Djimon Hounsou would at least enjoy some moderate success critically and commercially, but sadly that just wasn’t in the cards for ‘Serenity’ (not to be confused with the Joss Whedon ‘Firefly’ movie spin-off), which sunk – no pun intended, okay maybe a little – at the box office due to a lack of marketing/promotion, lackluster audience reception and savagery from critics.  What, you haven’t even heard of this movie?  I rest my case.

 

'Serenity’ is a high-concept, off-beat and genre-defying cinematic exercise, basically everything that a movie which aims to make money shouldn’t be.  And it succeeded brilliantly in that regard, having made less than $10 million so far on a $25 million budget after three weeks.  McConaughey and Hathaway didn’t even get to promote the film because the producers didn’t think it would do any good.  Why?  Apparently test audiences did not receive this movie, about a penniless fisherman (McConaughey) in a fishing village on an island who was one day approached by his ex-wife (Hathaway) to perpetrate the “perfect crime” by murdering her rich but abusive husband (Clarke) and making it look like an accident, very well at all.

 

To be honest, I didn’t receive ‘Serenity’ all that well either.  It is dreary and depressive, a frustratingly tedious and plodding mess of a movie over its one hour, forty-six minute running time.  While I’m aware ‘Serenity’ is an art-house, avant-garde neo-noir movie (which by default would normally intrigue me), its story isn’t all that interesting and its cast of flawed characters aren’t very engaging either.  Despite being ripped by some critics, the film’s unexpected and shocking Matrix-style “Shyamalan Twist” at the end was actually not bad, but that alone wasn’t enough for me to recommend it.

Grade: C-