Oh man! August already? That means fall and football are right around the corner. But that also means that I have some cleaning up to do before the fall semester starts. I can’t go into a new semester unorganized. I need to make it through a bunch of movies I missed so that I’m ready for the new stuff coming up. It is a rough job, I know, but some felid has to do it, right?
What is on deck for this month, you ask? We’ve got two movies that deal with personal transformation and whether you are doomed to be followed by your past. Sounds very serious, doesn’t it? Well, one of the movies is heavy (a little too heavy in my opinion) and the other is much lighter. I definitely wouldn’t watch them both on the same day. Just depends on your mood, really.
Destroyer (2018) [R]
Destroyer follows LAPD detective Erin Bell as she tracks down Silas, the leader of a gang she infiltrated in the past with her ex-partner Chris. As she follows the trail of her nemesis, she comes in contact with people from the previous case and the threads of the past and the present weave together. Through frequent, and occasionally confusing flashbacks, we see who Bell was and how she has become that which she is today.
Director Karyn Kusama (who also directed 2015’s The Invitation which I recommend over this film, actually) feels like she is trying too hard for profundity here. While she does a decent job of juggling the two different timelines here, it can sometimes be difficult to know what is going on when. And sure, you could argue maybe that is her point but when it gets in the way of understanding the basic plot, the style thing isn’t helping.
Also, the pacing just seems off. Things that should just fly by linger for far too long and scenes we should probably stick with a bit come and go in an instant. There is a bank robbery in the movie and after you’ve watched it, I’m curious to know if you felt like the rhythm of the scene is just off like I did.
The poster there is right, Kidman is good in this. I don’t know that I would call it “The Best Work Nicole Kidman Has Ever Done” like comingsoon.net says on there but she is definitely the best thing about the movie. The story(s) here are all right if you can deal with the weird pacing. I think I just feel like, in an attempt to make this film seem like a heavy, meditative statement piece, it instead feels like there is a giant flashing sign that says “Oscar bait”. If you can get past that though, you could definitely do worse.
6.5 paws out of 10
Alita: Battle Angel (2019) [PG-13]
A collaboration between Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron on paper looks like it could be really good. And I was pretty excited about what I had heard. Then the first trailer came out and I got a little nervous. But I told myself I would give it a chance when it came out.
Alita: Battle Angel begins with Dr. Ido as he rummages for cyborg parts. He comes across the head and torso of a girl, brings it home and reconstructs her using a body he had built for his disabled daughter who was killed during a burglary. Ido names this new girl, Alita, after his daughter. But the new Alita starts to remember things from her past and that past is far more dangerous and deadly that anyone would have suspected.
The story is, let’s say passable. It isn’t great. It isn’t terrible. And the movie ends on a cliffhanger so I presume we are going to be getting a sequel one of these days. The acting was mostly pretty good. But the teen romance … man, I could have totally done without that. It was just bad. There’s not a lot of it in there and hopefully it isn’t much of a motivating factor if the series moves forward but still, prepare yourself for some ridiculousness.
In a short dose, like a trailer, some of the special effects are off-putting. But after a few minutes of watching the film, you get used to Alita’s appearance, for example, and you kinda forgot that you are watching millions of dollars of computational time whizz past. The world itself is pretty striking and the character designs are good. The action scenes in particular are exciting to watch and were so engrossing to me that I didn’t stop to think about how technologically amazing they were until after I watched the film the first time through. Indeed, I went back and watched it a second time to sort of marvel at how it all looked.
Now seems like a good time to tell you that I haven’t seen the anime this is based on nor have I read the manga. This is a totally fresh story universe to me. Sorry, just had to get that out there for the folks who are going to email me about how the “insert previous version” was better. I can’t speak to which is better but I can say that I was a little surprised to have enjoyed Alita: Battle Angel. I presumed that it was going to be another throwaway effects-laden slog but it turned out to be more enjoyable than that. The plot has some holes. The romance is kinda dumb. But overall, Alita is fun to watch and works much more often than it doesn’t.
7.5 paws out of 10
As always, if you have a movie you think I should check out or you want to talk further about one of these reviews, drop me a line on Facebook.