kirillvanheerden Reviews

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Deeo emotion & world building. Needs to be seen at least twice to be understood.

[10/10 · 9 March 2019]

This movie is a masterpiece and must be seen at least twice to truly appreciate and overcome the dense compression. This is also why critics gave it a low score, it was too much to understand in a single viewing. In fact, the emotion and acting is amazing, Alita is truly about self discovery and improvement, Alita is simple and deep simultaneously, she can switch from silly to life&death serious in a heartbeat, she is transparent yet quick in her thought process and Rosa acts out all these qualities perfectly, she really is Alita. The story building is amazing in this film and it really needs a sequel to fully unpack. Only via a sequel (and managa) can the audience understand how much of a tricky joker and linchpin Nova truly is, how complex and deep the story is (Zalem is only the beginning, merely a drop in the bucket), about Alita's history and about her peers (but dont expect to understand her soul, no one does, not even her, its a theme of self discovery and this is inspirational. Plus the story is still being developed further). A sequel would have a multiplicative effect, not merely additive, because it helps unpack this complex story and the movies will resonate with each other.

The Fifth Element (1997)

Legendary film that has stood the test of time.

[10/10 · 30 December 2018]

22 years later and this film is still next level compared to the best films today, even today it still plays like a new blockbuster and is excellent entertainment. Comedy, action and sci-fi are regularly overlaid on top of each other, the volume of content this film manages to squeezes into ~120 minutes is totally amazing and waste scenes are non-existent. The comedy is actually unique and funny and it mixes well with the action. The sci-fi is great and the view of the future is still intriguing (sleeper cells in airplanes, apartments with vertical storage and reconfiguration, instant makeup devices, instant food devices, flying cars, trains that ride vertically up super tall skyscrapers, smart rifles, nuclear powered jetliners, medical devices that can reconstruct human bodies, etc). The acting is great and the characters really come across as real. The action is excellent and is greatly enriched by the previously mentioned overlays.

This should really be taught as an example in film school of how to do movies right.