Meewella | Critic

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Tag: Robert Rodriguez

QuickView: Alita – Battle Angel (2019)

Alita - Battle Angel (2019)

“This is just a body. It’s not bad or good. That part’s up to you.”

Dr Dyson Ido

Alita is two thirds of a good origin story, spoiled by an unexpectedly truncated ending that provides no resolution. Despite the heavy CGI at play, Rodriguez’s direction keeps the majority of the film impressively grounded, and the action sequences in particular benefit greatly from characters that feel like they occupy physical space (e.g. a cyborg roller derby shot using the camera techniques used for NASCAR). Ending aside, the biggest flaw is an artistic choice that fails to pay off. Whilst virtually all of the cyborgs have human faces — even where attached to monstrous mechanical bodies — Alita’s is motion-captured CGI to mirror her manga origins and provide a slightly otherworldly appearance. The cartoonishly large eyes are expressive, but the overly smoothed skin and features fall heavily into the uncanny valley, undermining many of the films slower paced, emotional story beats. The fact that the effects work so well on the human-faced cyborgs only reinforces that this was a deliberation decision, if an unfortunate one.

6/10

QuickView: Machete (2010)

“If they don’t offer us justice, then they aren’t laws! They are just lines drawn in the sand by men who would stand on your back for power and glory.”

Sartana

Although its rise from a spoof trailer in Grindhouse to an actual franchise is impressive, the creativity here is less so. Robert Rodriguez serves up the expected sex and violence of exploitation cinema, but this is less a modernised homage like Planet Terror than derivatively aping the genre’s style. There is fun to be had at the over-the-top ridiculousness of it all – “We didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us!” – but there is little of substance here that Rodriguez has not achieved better before in his Mariachi trilogy.

5/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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