February movie reviews

By Danny Villalobos
Staff Writer

Alita: Battle Angel

“Alita: Battle Angel” has been in the air ever since James Cameron picked up the project in the early 2000s. Now screening in 2019, the film successfully makes its way out of the “this-should’ve-never-been-made” category.

Adapted from the cyberpunk manga “Gunnm” by Yukito Kishiro, the film takes place in the far future where cyborgs and humans coexist together in a world devastated from a great war. The main character, Alita, played by Rosa Salazar, is put back together when Dr. Ido, played by Christoph Waltz, is found in a junkyard. From there, Alita makes her way to discover her past when a series of flashbacks brings back her old memories.

To start, the CGI is good. There’s nothing too unique about it, but there was not a single moment where the CGI seemed to fall apart; but there are moments where a scene has heavy CGI dependence and takes away believability.

Action sequences are well choreographed, but there’s a lot more left to desire. All performances are competent, but nothing too memorable.

There is more the filmmakers could have given the audience, but it seems this will come in a sequel (and there will be one). It’s disappointing that the filmmakers couldn’t provide the first movie with a lot more than it should.

Along with video game movie adaptations, these movies are in many ways utter garbage; but it’s nice to say that this manga adaptation is good one, even if you haven’t seen the original source material.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

In 2014, “The Lego Movie” became the unsuspected movie that would make audiences fall in love with it. Five years later, the direct sequel, “The Lego Movie 2” delivers again, but in this case it fails to beat the first.

Taking place after the first film, Fin (the kid who builds the Lego setting that this movie is based in) faces a new challenge when his younger sister joins him to play with his Legos. Soon, Duplo Legos invade the world and quickly changes the setting into an apocalyptic wasteland that makes the invaders less likely to attack. Emmet, the world’s master builder hero, dreams of a likely armageddon that will suck his world into a black hole.

Structurally, the movie feels off balance. The plot can be included in this analysis as well; however, the underlying message of getting along with younger siblings is heart-warming enough to distract the audience from overthinking it.

“The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” is by no means a disappointing movie, but the message it could have sent could’ve been a lot more.

Overall, this movie is likely to be put in the best animated category for this decade. You should see it while it’s in theaters.

The Prodigy

After discovering their son is intellectually gifted, Sarah (Taylor Schilling) and John Blume’s (Peter Mooney) happiness soon turns to nightmare when they discover the soul of a recently deceased serial killer is trying to take over their son’s body. It’s only a matter of time before the killer’s soul will fully take over.

Gladly, “The Prodigy” is perhaps the most competent horror movie to come out this season. Generally, horror movies that come out early in the year tend to go directly towards the film critic’s “black-site,” but “The Prodigy” only manages slightly in avoiding that.

There are many moments where you’ll scream at writing that doesn’t make sense. It’s as if the writer thought they could get away with the character’s—or the situation’s—stupidity, and the audience won’t question it.

A lot of scares still delve into the jump-scare setup, but strangely enough, there are moments where that sort of setup isn’t needed at all. The film was suspenseful in any case.

The idea of reincarnation is interesting, but don’t expect the movie to get philosophical with this subject; it’s just used for the setup and nothing more.

Perhaps the best part of this movie is that the main child actor didn’t suck. So kudos to Jackson Robert Scott for a making good performance.

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