Horror and comedy are a really great mix and the original Happy Death Day was a prime example of that combination.  It came from nowhere to surprise the movie going audience and turned into a sleeper hit for the horror studio aficionados Blumhouse.

However, this sequel to that movie does something odd and unexpected.  It really switches genre.  Oh, it is still comedy, but the horror aspects, while there in small bits, are pushed aside for a more of a science fiction feel.  And I think it works.

One of the top reasons why it works is the great performance from lead Jessica Rothe, returning as Tree Gelbman, the college student who, in the original, gets stuck in a loop repeating the same day that always seemed to end with her death.

She was able to break the loop in the original, but, who knew, she would wind up back in another loop, repeating the same day, once again. This time, however, there are some subtle and some not-so-subtle differences from the previous time.

The film goes into some explanation about why this was happening to her, and, at first, it felt a bit dubious in trying to explain what was happening, and the whole science fiction part was a bit iffy to me.  They made references to a certain 1980s movie that the film really is similar to.

However, after a little while, once the stage is set for Tree to be back front and center in the story, the film took off and it became great again.  Jessica Rothe is absolutely on fire here and she is the main reason this film works at all.  She is intense, angry, upset, emotional and ticked off, many times all at the same time, and pulls it off totally.  She emotes everything she is feeling and she also drives much of the comedy, most of which works well.

There are also some real emotional moments that she takes the audience through, much more than what you would expect in a film like this.

I have heard some criticism of the mystery surrounding the killer being weaker than in the first movie and I agree with that, but it is not intended to be.  The killer is a side plot that is there to show you different aspects of the character of Tree.  It is not the driving force of the plot and is really not that important.  It still provides a strong scene near the end of the third act.

There is a mid credit tag that feels as if it is setting up a third film, but it is not near as strong as the rest of the film, though there is a funny joke contained within it.

I enjoyed watching Happy Death Day 2U and feel that it is a strong sequel to a movie I was surprised to like as much as I did.

4.25 stars

It has been a long time coming for Alita: Battle Angel.  Based on a Manga graphic novel, the film is directed by Robert Rodriguez and co-written by James Cameron.

I was underwhelmed.

In a futuristic year of the 26th century, Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz), a surgeon specializing in cybernetic replacements discovered the torso of a young woman whose brain is still alive.  He took the girl back and gave her a cybernetic body, treating her like the daughter he lost.

In the world, there is a floating city named Zalem which is where the special people live and the planet below is where all of the rest of humanity has populated known as Iron City.  Everyone from the earth wishes they could make it to the city in the sky.

When she awakens, the young girl does not remember anything of her past and is given the name of Alita by Dr. Ido.  It soon is shown that this young girl with the new cybernetic body is a fighter of high level and more than just another pretty face.

I had several problems with Alita.  The biggest one is that I just could not get past the CGI of the characters.  The surroundings of Iron City was amazing and most of the CGI of the action scenes was tremendous, but every time they put the camera on Alita or any of the other cyborgs with human heads, I thought the CGI looked rubbery and fake.  The characters reminded me very much of Steppenwolf from Justice League, and he was my absolute least favorite part of that movie.  I remember thinking immediately how much I noticed that this was CGI and how, during Avengers: Infinity War, I had not thought of Thanos as being CGI until 3/4 into the film.  I thought the distinction was clear.

As I said though, the action CGI was done considerably well and was, for the most part, fun to watch.

Rosa Salazar, who was the motion capture actress of Alita, does a fine job.  I think she delivered as much as you could expect from this film.  I felt as if Christoph Waltz was out of place any time the film took his character outside of the house/lab.  When he ventured out onto the streets of Iron City, Waltz stuck out, and not in a positive way.

The story itself was pretty lacking.  It was long and the film felt long.  There were distinct moments where I found the movie dull and I was wanting more.  I did not buy the relationship between Alita and Hugo (Keean Johnson) and there is one scene here involving Alita’s heart that was downright laugh-out-loud funny when it was supposed to emotionally resonate.

Mahershala Ali played Vector here and he is fine.  I would have liked to have seen him as more of the villain than what he turned out to be.

The film was not a total fail, but I did find myself wishing it was over on more than one occasion.  It certainly sets up for a sequel that, actually, could be more intriguing than this one was.

2.5 stars 

This was a strange movie.

As I was looking at iTunes, I was attracted to the title of this film under the “Notable Indies” section.  Apparently it is in theaters in limited release right now.  I watched the trailer iTunes had and I was sold.

Then I started streaming the film and it was, as I already mentioned, strange.

The two big things in the title of the film, the killing of Hitler and the killing of Bigfoot, total maybe 5-8 minutes of the entire film.  It really is not about either of these events.  It is about Sam Elliot’s character Calvin Barr and his dealing with the choices that he has made in his life, choices that, despite being a myth and a legend, led to him being a lonely old man, alone with his dog.

Sam Elliott is exceptional here as he always is as a man who has to sacrifice happiness for an attempt at saving his country.  And the best part of the film is definitely his recount of the events surrounding his killing of Hitler.  The anger and resentment of his success and failure and how that changed the path of his life forever was very powerful and stood out among the laid back tone of most of this movie.

I also found the relationship between Calvin and his younger brother Ed (Larry Miller) fascinating as well.  Larry Miller is excellent here playing off the strong work of Elliott.

I can see people being unhappy with this movie after being drawn in by the fanciful title, expecting something different.  However, if you can get past that, as I did, you should enjoy this smaller, character-driven story of a unknown hero.

3.75 stars

Creepy kids can be very scary and that is something that The Prodigy has.

Good old Georgie from the remake of Stephen King’s It, Jackson Robert Scott gets the lead character here, as Miles, an extremely intelligent young boy who seemingly develops a darker side.

I was impressed with Jackson Robert Scott as he did a fine job as the bad seed Miles. Even more distracting was his mother, played by Taylor Schilling from Orange is the New Black.  I could not place her the entire movie and it bugged me the whole film.  I couldn’t believe when I finally saw the actress’s name in the end credits that I wasn’t able to immediately recognize Piper from OITNB.  It did distract me for much of the time she was on screen.  That was my problem, not hers.

The Prodigy was a mixed bag most of the time as there are good scenes and bad scenes. There are some times when you know exactly where the film is going and other times when you think you know, only for it to swerve off course.

Honestly, I found the first part of the movie pretty good.  I was engaged in the story and I was interested in what was going to happen.  Scott was doing his best creepy facial expressions and the jump scares were mostly well done.  I wanted to know more, and not just where I knew that actress from.

Unfortunately, the third act took the film off its rails completely in a sadly predictable and downright dumb conclusion that took away any chance The Prodigy had of being more than a forgettable and disposable horror movie.

2.7 stars

Cold Pursuit turned out to be like nothing I had imagined, and yet, just what I thought.

What do I mean by that?  Good question.  Well, the film itself was not like other type of revenge films that Liam Neeson has become quite well-known for, and yet shares much of the same DNA of that kind of film.  About halfway through the movie, I made a decision.

This is a satire of revenge films.

After making that analysis, lots of things that did not make much sense worked much better.  The comedy, which might seem to be trying too hard to be dark, makes more sense and fits the tone more.  The types of characters and their development can be understood.  Everything works better.

Either that or I am reading way too much into this movie.

Liam Neeson plays Nels Coxman, a snowplow operator in the city of Kehoe, Colorado, about 3 hours outside of Denver, and he is constantly busy clearing paths for the vehicles to even move.  So much so that he is dubbed the “man of the year” by a grateful community.

However, his ideal and happy life takes a dark turn when his son winds up killed by drug dealers, sending Coxman into a downward spiral.  It destroys his marriage to Laura Dern (who is criminally underused in this movie) and sends him to the verge of suicide.  When Coxman discovers that his son was not involved with the drug dealers but was, instead, an innocent victim, he turned his vitriol outward toward the drug dealers that were to blame.

The fact that Liam Neeson is the star of the movie helps give this credit because he is so involved in other types of this genre.  Here, Neeson plays a man who does not seem to be former military or trained assassin.  He is a snowplow operator.  Still he becomes a killing machine and continually disposed of the bodies in the same manner, a way he saw on TV.  That seems to me to be a shot at one of the typical tropes of revenge movies and using Liam Neeson to personify that is awesome.

The villains are all strange and eccentric, but go against the type you would normally see in revenge flicks.  The main villain, Viking (Tom Bateman) is just a total bizarre drug lord who is all over the place.  We see his relationship with his son (Nicholas Holmes), which was strange as could be.  Viking wanted his son to eat a strict diet and act in certain manner and could not see that he was anything but what he had wanted.  Nicholas Holmes’s character was not your typical child in these film either and his eventual connection with Liam Neeson was very sweet.

There was a very funny bit that happened every time someone was killed during the movie, and there were a lot of people killed during the movie.  The body count was definitely high but I thought they did a decent job of maintaining the violence level.  There was blood, but the scene was not just about the blood that was spilled.

Watching this as a satire/spoof makes some of the characters fit better too.  There was a character named The Eskimo that could be looked at in a different light in a satire of revenge movies.

As a satire, the ridiculously generic movie title works too.  Just sayin’.

I was entertained by the movie.  Of course, if I were looking at this with a different spectrum, then I could see many problems, but as I approached this as a satire, those problems turned into positives.

Or I am completely off track.

3.9 stars