James Cameron is making the Battle Angel Alita movie.

Anyone who hates this movie is a cop

― Norm’s Superego (silby), Wednesday, February 20, 2019 12:24 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the only part of this movie that sucked was that my roommate's boyfriend hated every minute of it and loudly complained about it the whole walk home from the theater

at least i have y'all to enjoy painfully earnest action spectacles with

💙

can't stop thinking about this movie

I keep flashing back to the scene where her most of her is destroyed and she vaults onto the dude's face with her one arm, rage-filled

has now done 380 mil worldwide and was still on some 2000+ US screens over its fourth weekend, sucks that the domestic total will give this the stench of failure regardless

christolph waltz is so good in this movie

word

this was better than i expected and far more faithful to the source material than i could've predicted.
cons: overstuffed, overlong, more than a bit indulgent in its expectations about how much i'm supposed to care about these characters, lol at the ed norton tease
pros: visually sumptuous, clear and well orchestrated fight scenes, consistently well-thought out creative design, literal big-eyed manga heroine surprisingly well acted

flipped back thru some chunks of this at the tail end of a flight with no time to watch a whole movie. it still ruled, and benefited from being able to skip the Hugo scenes and just focus on Alita and Doc Ido. i love how many times she yells "HIIIII-YA!" and smashes things. it's hard not to wish they'd cut the hugo subplot way down and actually finished the whole story, but i also admire the gutsiness of their imagining they'd be able to do a part ii, and thus take their time with the origin story stuff, multiple showdowns with the same guys, lots of talk about berserker bodies and panzer kunst, etc. etc. wish connolly had a little more to do but maybe i forgot/skipped her best scenes.

connolly and ali both seemed mostly wasted as far as i could see but they didn't take anything away from the film

it's flawed, and ending right where the story should be ramping up to a conclusion is... frustrating

but it has a lot of heart and the cast are great

(especially christolph waltz, who delivers an actual genuinely touching performance instead of falling back on the tics he's been relying on since inglourious basterds and also he has a rocket-propelled hammer ffs)

agreed wholeheartedly re: waltz

is this maybe robert rodriguez's best movie?

what a wildly varible career that guy's had

i'd have to rewatch SpyKids and the first two Mariachi movies, which iirc do have the advantage of being a little more focused than this one.

I maintain that this movie’s wandering episodic focus is a strength not a weakness and makes the whole project feel More Anime

i recall the first spy kids being an absolute joy

ranking the Rodriguezes I've seen:

1995 Desperado
1995 Four Rooms: Room 309 - The Misbehavers
1992 El Mariachi
1996 From Dusk Till Dawn
2002 Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams
2007 Grindhouse: Planet Terror
2010 Machete
2003 Once Upon a Time in Mexico
2001 Spy Kids
2013 Machete Kills
1991 Bedhead
2005 Sin City
1998 The Faculty
2003 Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

not seen:

1994 Roadracers
2005 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
2009 Shorts
2011 The Black Mamba
2011 Spy Kids: All the Time in the World
2013 Two Scoops
2014 Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
2015 Sock 'em Dead
2018 The Limit
2019 Alita: Battle Angel

i remember absolutely dying at the misbehavers in theaters but i haven't seen it since then and i'm unlikely to hunt it down

I groaned thinking that the villain was played by Cameron himself under dodgy makeup but then groaned again when it turned out not to be Cameron.

would now rank this between Spy Kids and Kills