There are only three new films this week, another that didn’t seek reviews and a mini festival of comedies to fill in. So you do have choices.
Alita: Battle Angel: 3 stars
Arctic: 3 ½
Isn’t it Romantic: 2 ½
Just for Laughs Comedy Film Festival: various
Happy Death Day 2U: --
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL: For a good part of its long running-time this film has the feel of an engrossing James Cameron adventure. That fits. He produced and co-wrote it and has fussed over it for some 10 years or so. Then he turned it over to Robert Rodriguez to direct and he's infused it with the kinetic b-movie energy he's known for. Good combination, right? for a dystopian sci-fi epic based on a popular Japanese manga? Well, yes and no. It plays well initially, keeps you interested and then confuses. There are simply too many plot lines crammed in here. They're taken from three cyberpunk graphic novels by Yukito Kishiro and given too little explanation or even reason to be together in one movie. We're less involved as it goes along.
It takes place in 2563, some 300 years after an apocalyptic war. Iron City is still largely rubble and people scavenge for old robot parts among the rocks. Alita is part machine, part human, re-constructed by a kindly doctor (or is he?) played by Christoph Waltz. She's played by Rosa Salazar but given a cyborg look through computer animation. She's consumed with trying to figure out exactly what she is, a plot line that's not followed fully enough. She does have tremendous fighting ability, due to something in her past, but what does she, or at least the script, do with it? Take her into a violent sport called "motorball." Mahershala Ali, as the sport's boss wants her dead. His associate (Jennifer Connelly) who also happens to be the doctor’s ex-wife, is around as a malevolent presence. There are some nifty battle scenes and a tense sequence as Alita and a young man she’s become friendly with try to climb up to a mysterious city floating in the sky. It stays a mystery though. That’s typical of this film. Entertaining much of the way but unable to make the most of its possibilities. (5th Avenue, Scotia Bank, Marine Gateway and many suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
ARCTIC: We hear about real stories of survival often enough that we don’t need any indication that this one really happened. It just feels absolutely authentic. The cinematography captures the bleak cold of the wide open landscape and Mads Mikkelsen makes us believe in the ordeal he’s going through by using only his face and body. If movies are supposed to show not tell, this is a stirling example. There’s almost no word spoken. The only other person in it is in a coma. But you are intensely engaged in the story.
There’s not much too it. Mads plays a survivor of a plane crash. He carves SOS into the snow, ice fishes for food, chases off a polar bear with a flare and tries to call for help with a hand-cranked signal device. The helicopter that shows up crashes too and he now feels obliged to help a woman passenger who’s injured and out cold. This is cinematic minimalism and yet you follow every bit of what the survivor does as if you’re part of it. After a while the material does start feeling thin but it manages to revive an air of urgency before it ends. It’s a smart film by a first-time director, Joe Penna, who sharpened his visual skills in a series of YouTube videos. Survival, plain and simple, is his subject here. (5th Avenue) 3 ½ out of 5
ISN’T IT ROMANTIC: That’s right. No question mark. Why? Who knows, but it is in line with other unrealized objectives of this silly film. (Silly, but often funny. A pleasant enough movie to take a date to or to enjoy on a girls’ night out). The problem is it doesn’t sting. It doesn’t very well carry out the criticism it intends of romantic comedies as a genre. It’s like many an SNL skit, the kind that understands its target perfectly but can’t manage to say much original about it. Luckily it’s got endearing Rebel Wilson in the lead. She almost makes it worthwhile.
Liam Hemsworth, in the film, calls her “beguiling” and the script then reveals he doesn’t really know what that means. He becomes Rebel’s love interest in a sort of parallel universe that she finds herself in after a bonk on the head in a subway mugging. Suddenly she lives in a large apartment with a huge closet and shoe collection, in New York that is suddenly colorful and smelling like lavender. At work, where she’s not recognized as the star architect she is, standard romantic comedy characters exist. Besides Liam as a rich developer, there’s a nice guy she doesn’t realize is in love with her and a woman with a competitive hate on her. There’s also a gay man in the film who offers wise advice. The script has fun with all the tropes of films like these. It even starts with a clip from Pretty Woman. Rebel’s character as a young girl is watching it and told by her mother that life can’t be like that for her. Part of the implication is that she’s too chubby for that. It neglects to follow up on that or most of its insights and settles for a spot somewhere between a trifle and a waste of time. (International Village, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5
JUST FOR LAUGHS FILM FESTIVAL: You've surely noticed that there's a big comedy festival happening here in Vancouver and that for the second year they've added a film festival to it. Most of these nine movies have not played here before and judging by the four I’ve seen, they’re a mixed bag.
I gave high marks to Thunder Road when it played here in October. It’s very funny about a hapless Texas cop and screens Monday. Tonight’s opener, Family, which I haven’t seen, has also been getting very complimentary reviews. Naturally, it’s about family discord, a favorite comedy target.
I enjoyed Sorry For Your Loss for its very dry humor,
Bruce Greenwood’s snappy performance and Justin Bartha’s low-key role of a man complying with the last wishes of his just deceased father. He’s to scatter his ashes on the football field where the Winnipeg Blue Bombers play. His mother (Lolita Davidovitch) and Greenwood know part of the reason, but after a series of set-backs, a very funny real story comes out. It’s not art, but it’s fun.
So too with Pork Pie, a film from New Zealand with an interesting history. It’s a re-make of a national classic, directed by, Matt Murphy, the son of the man who made the original back in 1981. You’ll find reviews saying it doesn’t match its spirit. I don’t know about that but I like the speedy energy throughout.
Three young people, a writer fleeing his own wedding, a kid who may be a car thief and a woman escaping the burger joint she works at, go on a wild ride in a Mini Cooper, all the way from the north island to the bottom of the south, through several elaborate police-car chases and on to national hero status as TV news follows them like some white Bronco. There’s a wonderful anarchic feel to this one. It plays Saturday night. It plays Monday night.
I Killed My Husband, a Spanish and American co-production, in Spanish, is my least favorite. It features a couple of superstars, Maria Conchita Alonso and Assumpta Serna, in a weak comedy. A woman accidentally shoots her husband and then has to pretend everything is alright. She’s hosting a chic garden party to celebrate an award he has just won and repeatedly has to deal with guests and her own daughter asking where he is. A good idea but unsubtle, unusually verbose and as raunchy as some Hollywood teen movies. It plays Monday night.
The films play at the VanCity Theatre and you can find more about them and the rest of the comedy festival at http://www.jflnorthwest.com/