Movie still from “Alita: Battle Angel.” Credit: Courtesy of TNS

Based on the 90’s manga Gunnm, published as Battle Angel Alita in English translations, Robert Rodriguez’s cyberpunk adaption just dropped, nearly three decades after the comic run had ended. I could not think about another perfect example of spectacle filmmaking, and though it is beautiful with amazing special effects and is genuinely a fun two hours of movie, not much lies beneath the surface. Alita is a fun and enjoyable movie, to be sure, but it is in no way a good film.

The film, itself, is gorgeous. The effects, for the most part, are world class. The Earth of Alita is gritty but still beautiful, and where the characters and their various cybernetic enhancements meet look nearly seamless. But, like so much of this movie, where it comes to the main character herself, Alita, played by Rosa Salazar, the effect is too much. She, unlike the rest of the cast, has an uncanny valley effect put on her. Her eyes are too big, hair doesn’t fall correctly, and her skin seems to be lit in a different amount of light as the rest of the world around her. We find out why she looks different from the rest of the cast as the film goes on, but it doesn’t help how unsettling it is to watch her.

Moreover, however, is the problem with how the character is written and portrayed. She’s so earnest, so native in a world that can’t suffer that sort of thing. She has no memory of her life before Christoph Waltz’s Dr. Dyson Ido found her cyborg body on a scrap heap and gives her a new body, and the film spends little time with her wanting to figure out what she is. Instead, it spends time world building other things, the existence of heavily cybernetic bounty hunters that serve as half of the police force in the dystopian Iron City that sits in the literal shadow of the floating supposed utopia of Zalem. It spends time showing read more…

The Witches – 1990

The spirit and mythos of witches, it’s always been a part of storytelling. From Harry Potter to The School Of Necessary Magic, we will always hold these mythical and−in many ways real−fantastical folks in our hearts. One of my favorite movies as a kid was The Witches by the amazing writer Roald Dahl.

The 1990 movie not only had his story, it had Jim Henson and Anjelica Huston behind it. Well, it is getting a reboot. No one can ever replace Jim Henson or Anjelica Huston, however, some living legends are now on board.

It is rumored that Octavia Spencer will be in it as well as Anne Hathaway. People complained about the ending of the 1990 movie because it didn’t stay true to Dahl’s story. This one is reportedly destined to be different and stay true to the original idea of Dahl.

And guess who is directing it? You guessed it, Robert Zemeckis.

The original story had a boy get turned into a mouse and face a team of witches. The 1990 film version did stay true to that idea, however, it did change the ending. Many didn’t like that. Enter Zemeckis.

He is touted to be a visionary director and is most famous for the movies Romancing the Stone and the Back to the Future Trilogy. He also directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Forest Gump.

Guess who will be producing it? If you said Guillermo del Toro, you guessed right. None other than the visionary director behind Pan’s Labyrinth will be helping get this story straight on the screen.

The actual story is about a boy whose parents die in a car crash. He then goes on a vacation and ends up near the ocean where read more…

Netflix Release Premiere Date & Character Poster For ‘The Umbrella Academy’

Based on the Eisner Award-winning comic book by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Bá, the first season of this show of dysfunctional superheroes dropped on Netflix on February 15th. Starring Ellen Page, Tom Hopper, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher, Ashley Madekwe, David Casteñeda, and Mary J Blige. An interesting look at what happens when child heroes grow up and have to be adults with their myriad abilities.

Beware, what follows may contain spoilers.

While the idea, itself, is not original, we’ve seen stories about child heroes growing up and how it could be a struggle to cope with what you can do as an adult, The Umbrella Academy plays this more true than other stories with the same idea. Klaus, who can speak to ghosts, keeps himself high all time as to make himself unable to hear most of them, and Allison, who can make anyone do what she says, used her powers to not only further her acting career, but also gain a relationship and eventually parent her child. This is what would happen to children who were raised by a father who only wanted them for the expressed purpose of forming a crime-fighting team, we see it with kids who have overbearing parents bent on living vicariously through them, at least the maladjusted ones anyway. They weren’t even given names except by the android their father created to help raise them that they to the present day refer to as Mom.

Furthermore, the world around them is also interesting. Number Five, who seemed to never got one of those names, can teleport and time travel and begins the first episode returning to family after being lost in time for nearly two decades for the rest of the family, but much longer for him. He’s chased by a group of time traveling assassins, and he knows that the world is going to end in little more than a week. Only brought together by the death of their father, who is survived by the aforementioned robot and material figure as well as an intelligent and well-dressed chimpanzee butler named Pogo, it had been thirteen years, since the death of their brother Ben, who could summon a Cthulhu-like monster from within him.

A great cast and an astounding soundtrack are what makes this show fun to watch, and it’s pacing both takes time to explore each of the six remaining Hargreaves children, without ever losing momentum towards the thrilling end of the first season. The show has just the right about of silliness sprinkled into it so that you don’t get too bogged down in the darkness of it all. How would you be if you spent the last nearly five decades completely alone in a hellscape that you have no idea how to prevent only to escape it only eight days before it happens? That would be terribly depressing, but then put all of that into someone with the body of a boy now going through puberty? That’s still dark, to be sure, but it’s also hilarious.

Special praise must be given, however, to Ellen Page, who plays Vanya/Number Seven, who is told all her life that read more…