'Alita: Battle Angel'

What happens when a famously seat-of-the-pants director goes to work for a notoriously detail-oriented filmmaker? Unsurprisingly, in the case of “Alita: Battle Angel,” a big mess, though an exhilarating one.

Robert Rodriguez, he of “Sin City” and “Spy Kids,” is the director in question. “Titanic” and “Avatar” auteur James Cameron is his boss — and co-screenwriter, along with Rodriguez and Laeta Kalogridis (“Terminator Genisys”) — in adapting Yukito Kishiro’s cult-fave manga “Gunnm.” Together, they conjure up exciting action sequences in a meticulous steampunk landscape, centered on a performance-capture CGI character that’s the closest Hollywood has come to the edge of the “uncanny valley.”

It’s the year 2563, some 300 years after a great war that left humanity divided into two worlds: The city in the sky Zalem, and the grungy, bustling areas on the surface, like Iron City, where Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) repairs workers’ cyborg parts and scrounges for supplies in the mounds where Zalem dumps its refuse.

Ido’s latest salvage item is the head and shoulders of a female cyborg that contains a fully intact brain of a human female, a teen-ager. Ido cleans up the cyborg parts, and provides a new body — the origins of which form the basis of Ido’s backstory, and his connection to a shrewd rival doctor, Chiren (Jennifer Connelly). Ido gives his new creation the name Alita, and raises her like his own daughter, though they both have to solve one mystery: Akita’s identity and memory of her life in Zalem.

Alita looks like a normal teen girl, except for her enormous eyes, which take in her surroundings with a measure of curiosity and innocence. The eyes are evocative of Japanese anime style, but also have the haunted look of a Margaret Keane painting — and that mix of emotions is how Rosa Salazar, who deftly provides the voice and body performance to Alita, plays the character.

Alita discovers a lot about her self and her new world, through Ido and Hugo (Keean Johnson), who befriends Alita on the street, teaching her about the taste of chocolate and the popularity of motorball — a combination of roller derby and Rock’em Sock’em Robots that is the only chance anyone in Iron City has of getting up to Zalem.

Alita also learns there are nasty bounty hunters, called hunter warriors, who capture wayward cyborgs at the demand of The Factory, which provides raw materials for Zalem. Alita is surprised to learn that Ido is a hunter warrior, using the bounties to pay for repairs of his Iron City clients. Alita finds that she has fighting skills, which spring into action when a brute cyborg, Grewishka, is sent to kill her — under the orders of Nova, the unseen leader of Zalem, working through Vector (Mahershala Ali), the gangster who controls Iron City’s motorball arena.

Rodriguez and his team cram a lot of world-building into two hours, and if that means a bare framework of a plot, then so be it. It’s the rust-speckled wonders of Iron City that Rodriguez and Cameron are most interested in, along with the spunky CGI warrior in the middle of it all. Maybe if there are future “Alita” adventures — and the movie’s ending sets up franchise possibilities — we’ll get a complex story to fully inhabit this fascinating world.

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‘Aiita: Battle Angel’

★★★

Opens Thursday, February 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.  Running time: 122 minutes.

'Capernaum'

In our recent discussions of seeking out more diversity among movie directors, there’s a name that needs to be included in the conversation as one of the best women directors working today: Nadine Labaki, the Lebanese actor and filmmaker behind the searing “Capernaum.”

“Capernaum” is Labaki’s third film and is a stunning departure from her female-centered “Caramel” and “Where Do We Go Now?”. The new film — which won the Jury Prize at Cannes last May, and is nominated for the Academy Award in the Foreign-Language Film category — is a gritty, uncompromising look at life on the mean streets of Beirut through the eyes of a child hardened by his experiences.

Labaki introduces her main character, 12-year-old Zain (played by Zain Al Raffea) in a courtroom. He’s been accused of a violent crime, but he’s also suing his mother, Souad (Kawthar Al Haddad), and father, Selim (Fadi Kamel Youssef), for the crime of giving him life in the first place. His explanation to the judges form the flashbacks through which Labaki (who has a minor role as Zain’s lawyer) tells the boy’s harrowing story.

Zain is one of the older kids in Souad and Selim’s tiny, filthy apartment, and he’s forced to skip school to work for the family — mostly making deliveries for a local grocer. Zain assigns one job to himself: To protect his beloved little sister, Sahar, and never letting their parents know that Sahar is having her first period. That, Zain knows, will be a sign to marry Sahar off to the leering grocer.

When the parents do send Sahar away, Zain runs away, eventually landing at a beachside amusement park. He meets Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), an Ethiopian immigrant who mops floors there, and is hiding her baby boy Yonas from her employers and the authorities. Rahil aims to raise money to buy a fake ID from Aspro (Alaa Chouchnieh), a shady dealer in a souk. Zain agrees to babysit Yonas while Rahil works, in exchange for lodging in Rahil’s shanty shack.

But when Rahil unexpectedly doesn’t come home one day, Zain finds he must scramble to keep Yonas from starving — while also keeping hidden from Rahil’s landlady and from Aspro, who knows there’s big money in trafficking a baby to adoption dealers.

“Capernaum” isn’t unrelentingly depressing, as Labaki squeezes out small moments of joy through the hardship in Zain’s hard-knock life. It is a serious-minded movie, though, and Labaki has plenty to say about how society treats our smallest and poorest members.

Thanks to the nonprofessional actors in the cast, particularly its 12-year-old lead, and a breakneck pacing, “Capernaum” sweeps the audience up in the plight of young Zain, whose resolve and even hopefulness stay steady in the face of every bad thing life throws at him.

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‘Capernaum’

★★★1/2

Opened Friday, December 14, in select cities; opens Friday, February 15, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for language and some drug material. Running time: 126 minutes; in Arabic with subtitles.

'Isn't It Romantic'

Rebel Wilson gets to have her cake and eat it, too, in “Isn’t It Romantic,” a formula romantic comedy that also is a parody of formulaic romantic comedies.

Wilson, the Australian comic relief of the “Pitch Perfect” series, stars here as Natalie, who grew up watching romantic comedies and having her happily-ever-after dreams shattered by her disapproving mum (Jennifer Saunders, in a too-brief cameo). Cut to today, and Natalie lives in a crappy apartment in a rundown New York neighborhood, and is an architect and resident doormat in a shabby architectural firm, which at the moment is trying to woo a handsome client, Blake (Liam Hemsworth). 

Natalie tells her romance-obsessed assistant Whitney (Betty Gilpin) that romantic comedies are rubbish, and decries that they’re filled with such cliches as the mincing gay best friend and the bitchy female office competition. Meanwhile, Natalie spectacularly fails to notice that her office best friend Josh (Adam Devine) is mooning over her.

One evening, Natalie makes eye contact with a hot guy on the subway — who, it turns out, is only trying to steal her purse. Natalie fights ferociously, but ends up whacking her head into a pillar. When she wakes up in the hospital, she slowly realizes everything is different: New York smells like lavender rather than poop, and hot guys are falling all over themselves to impress her.

“I’m in a [bleep]ing romantic comedy!” she finally yells out. “And it’s [bleep]ing PG-13!”

Sure enough, Natalie is being swooned over by Blake, but when they seem to consummate their relationship, things immediately cut to the next day and “good morning, beautiful!” Meanwhile, Tiffany has turned into an angry rival, Natalie’s neighbor Donny (Brandon Scott Jones) has become a flaming font of “Queer Eye” inspiration and Josh has found a new love, the impossibly beautiful “yoga ambassador” Isabella (played by the impossibly beautiful Priyanka Chopra).

The script — written by Erin Cardillo, with a strong rewrite by rom-com veterans Dana Fox (“What Happens in Vegas”) and Katie Silberman (“Set It Up”) — borrows heavily from “Pretty Woman” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” with references to “When Harry Met Sally…” and “Jerry Maguire,” among others, thrown in for good measure. The cliches run thick and fast, but they work because (as the cliche goes) all cliches have a kernel of truth in them.

Director Todd Strauss-Schulson (“A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas”) plays up Wilson’s outsized personality and her willingness to sacrifice dignity for a good joke. He also deploys Wilson’s rapport with Devine, established in the “Pitch Perfect” films, to good effect. And, when all else fails, he can spring up with a charmingly ridiculous musical number, such as when Natalie tries her hand at karaoke and lands in a Whitney Houston-inspired dance routine.

“Isn’t It Romantic” works with ruthless efficiency, getting Wilson and the cast through the story quickly, living out the same romantic-comedy tropes it mocks, and never dwelling on any humorous scenario too long. There’s no Judd Apatow-style piling on of ad-libbed jokes, and the movie clocks in at a rapid 84 minutes — exactly what this funny bur derivative material deserves.

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‘Isn’t It Romantic’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, February 13, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for language, some sexual material and a brief drug reference. Running time: 84 minutes.

'Happy Death Day 2U'

It’s always a nice surprise when a horror-thriller like “Happy Death Day 2U” comes along and cleverly upends the low expectations one would normally have for a low-budget slasher — and a sequel, to boot.

If you remember the first “Happy Death Day” — and seeing the first one is a must to make any sense out of this one — you’ll recall that it put sorority sister Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) in a lethal “Groundhog Day” situation. She wakes up one Monday, hung over, in the dorm room of a stranger, nice-guy Carter Davis (Israel Broussard), and goes through the day leading up to a surprise birthday party, which she never gets to because a killer in a baby-face Halloween mask kills her first. Then she wakes up again in Carter’s dorm room and the cycle repeats itself until she can figure out who’s killing her over and over again.

The sequel begins exactly where the first movie left off, on Tuesday, but seen through Carter’s nerdy roommate Ryan Phan (Phi Vu), as he goes through a normal day that ends with his violent murder — and he goes through it all again. Since one of the first people he tells this to is Tree, she’s immediately accepting of his otherwise outlandish story, and jumps in to help him solve his problem.

The source of Ryan’s time loop — and, it turns out, Tree’s — is the project Ryan and his science partners, Samar and Dre (Suraj Sharma and Sarah Yarkin), are building in the quantum mechanics lab. When they fire it up, over the objections of Dean Bronson (Steve Zissis), it lets loose a cosmic blast that sends Tree to the last place she wants to go: Monday again.

Sure enough, she wakes up in Carter’s dorm room, seemingly reliving the day from hell in which she was repeatedly murdered in the first movie. But she quickly notices some changes — like how her roommate Lori (Ruby Modine) is different, and the sorority’s queen bee Danielle (Rachel Matthews) is, like, nice. Ryan explains that this loop is in a different dimension, and they have to use the quantum reactor lab project to fix things to end the loop. 

Along the way, it would be nice if Tree could also prevent people from getting gruesomely murdered by the baby-mask killer. There’s also another difference in this dimension that makes Tree seriously consider whether she’d rather stay instead of going back to her old life.

Writer-director Christopher Landon, woh directed the first “Happy Death Day” and a few of the “Paranormal Activity” sequels, references early on the inspiration for this sequel: “Back to the Future Part II.” It’s a fair comparison, because Landon takes the structure of the first “Happy Death Day” and tweaks it in some creative ways to bring a fresh perspective — and a new mystery — to the familiar scenario of the first movie.

As with the first movie, “Happy Death Day 2U” is held together — even in its more slapstick moments — by Rothe. Her comic skills and scream-queen charm keep us invested as Tree must once again endure the live-die-repeat cycle to get to a satisfying conclusion.

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‘Happy Death Day 2U’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, February 13, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for for violence, language, sexual material and thematic elements. Running time: 100 minutes.

'Cold War'

Love, music and politics are an explosive mix in “Cold War,” a heartbreakingly beautiful drama from the rightly acclaimed Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, whose movie “Ida” won the Academy Award for Foreign-Language film four years ago.

The story of “Cold War” starts in the rubble of World War II, when Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a music director, first encounters Zula (Joanna Kulig), a singer whose voice is as remarkable as her beauty. The two fall in love hard, to the point of obsession.

As musicians in a Poland that is now under the influence of Stalin’s Russia, Wiktor and Zula are forced to perform for the Communist government’s propaganda machine. They talk about someday escaping to the West — but when the chance comes to make a break for freedom in France, something happens that changes their lives forever.

Pawilkowski, co-writing with Janusz Glowacki and Piotr Borkowski, loosely based the story on his own parents. He keeps the story at an intimate level, channeling global events through the eyes of this love-bound couple, and how politics is filtered through their passions.

The movie has the allure of film noir, with foggy streets and smoky gin joints rendered in piercing black-and-white images by cinematographer Łukasz Żal, who received an Academy Award nomination for his work. (The movie is also nominated in the Foreign-Language Film category, and Pawlikowski scored a surprise directing nod, the first time a director has been nominated for a film didn’t get a Best Picture nomination since the Oscars expanded the Best Picture category past five nominees.)

Because of Pawilkowski’s tight focus on this self-destructive couple, the movie becomes a showcase for Kulig and Kot, and their performances have an intensity seldom found in movies. It may be a “Cold War,” but the actors’ chemistry burns through the screen.

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‘Cold War’

★★★1/2

Opened December 21 in select cities; opens Friday, February 1, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Century Cinemas 16 (South Salt Lake City). Rated R for some sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 87 minutes; in Polish (and other languages) with subtitles.

'Destroyer'

Nicole Kidman delivers another searing, persona-busting performance in the crime drama “Destroyer,” but her work is a step above the garden-variety story it services.

When we first see Kidman’s Erin Bell, she’s in bad shape. Battered, possibly hung over or maybe still drunk, the L.A. County Sheriff’s detective shuffles unsteadily to a crime scene being processed. A homicide victim, shot multiple times, lies in the road, a few dye-stained $100 bills near the body. Bell tells the detectives working the case that she knows who did it, but they don’t believe her.

In the next scene, Bell goes to her desk at the sheriff’s office, and there’s a piece of mail waiting. Inside the envelope is a dye-stained $100 bill. She instantly knows the message behind this cryptic delivery: Silas is back.

Bell slips out, avoiding her partner (Shamier Anderson), for some off-the-books detective work, as she starts asking old criminal acquaintances where Silas is. They never know, but they know somebody who does — which leads Bell through a rogue’s gallery that includes a sleazy lawyer (Bradley Whitford) and Silas’ crazed girlfriend (Tatiana Maslany).

At each step, director Karyn Kusama (“The Invitation”) flashes back to Bell’s past. As a young L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy, Bell was recruited to go undercover with Chris (Sebastian Stan), an FBI informant, to infiltrate a gang of bank robbers led by the charismatic, manipulative and deadly dangerous Silas (Toby Kebbell).

Meanwhile in the present, Bell also is dealing with a family crisis: Her estranged teen daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn), who had been living with Bell’s ex (Scoot McNairy), is taking up with a sleazy older guy (Beau Knapp).

The script, by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, teases out its information like bait on a fishhook, reeling us in with every revelation. It’s only in the aftermath that one realizes there’s not a lot of there there, that the story is a barebones string of encounters without much to flesh them out.

Kusama and Kidman collaborate to make the most of what the script provides. Kusama digs into the dingy atmosphere that Bell’s criminal contacts inhabit. And Kidman, nearly recognizable as the world-weary detective, puts in a masterful performance of regret, revenge and redemption.

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‘Destroyer’

★★1/2

Opened December 25 in select cities; opens Friday, February 1, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout, violence, some sexual content and brief drug use. Running time: 121 minutes.

'The Kid Who Would Be King'

The action adventure “The Kid Who Would Be King” seems to be following the pattern established 12 months ago by “Paddington 2,” by serving up an unassuming British family movie that’s more charming and smart than anyone expects.

Director-writer Joe Cornish, helming his first movie since the 2011 aliens-in-the-projects thriller “Attack the Block,” re-imagines the Arthurian legends for modern times. This, the movie points out, is a time when people are leaderless and pitted against each other — fill in your particular Brexit or Trumpian complaint here — and therefore exactly the right time for heroes like King Arthur.

The kid in question is Alex (played by Louis Ashbourne Serkis, son of “Lord of the Rings” star Andy Serkis), a 12-year-old living in a council estate with his mum (Denise Gough). Alex regularly defends his best pal Bedders (Dean Chaumoo) from their school’s bullies, Lance (Tom Taylor) and Kaye (Rhianna Dorris). If these character names feel familiar, you’re very clever and stop reading ahead.

One night, the bullies chase Alex into a demolition site, where Alex finds a sword poking out of a concrete pillar. Alex realizes that the sword is Excalibur, and that he is the chosen heir to King Arthur’s mantle. 

The re-emergence of Excalibur also awakens two ancient beings. One is Merlin, who we see as a gangly teen (played by Angus Imrie, son of British comedienne Celia Imrie) — though he transforms into an owl, or into his older form, who looks a lot like Sir Patrick Stewart. The other is Arthur’s long-imprisoned sorceress half-sister Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson), who recognizes that the political turmoil above ground make the perfect conditions for her global conquest.

The ensuing adventure sets Alex, Bedders and Merlin — and, after some convincing, Lance and Kaye — on a quest to stop Morgana before she surfaces. Cornish also makes space for some serious stuff, like Alex learning the truth about his wayward father.

Cornish deftly mixes exciting action sequences, some scary CGI creatures, and a sense of humor that the kids will enjoy and is dry enough to amuse their parents whose knowledge of Arthurian legend begins and ends with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Cornish is also blessed with a strong group of young actors who are earnest heroes without being cloying or ridiculous, making “The Kid Who Would Be King” a tale worth telling again.

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‘The Kid Who Would Be King’

★★★

Opens Friday, January 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for fantasy action violence, scary images, thematic elements including some bullying, and language. Running time: 118 minutes.

'Stan & Ollie'

The biographical comedy-drama “Stan & Ollie” is indeed a fine mess, a string of sentimental cliches that are enlivened by stars Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly and their abundant fondness for the real-life duo they play, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

The silent and early-sound comedy duo is shown here at the end of their run, on a 1953 music-hall tour of the United Kingdom that they hope will revive their flagging careers. Laurel (played by Coogan) is polishing the gags in a “Robin Hood” script, while Hardy (played by Reilly) is succumbing to his usual vices: Food, matrimony, and the ponies.

The tour has the duo re-creating their classic skits for smaller-than-promised audiences, until they take the advice of their promoter Bernard (Rufus Jones) and perform some publicity stunts. When their wives — Hardy’s Lucille (Shirley Henderson), a worrywart ex-script girl, and Laurel’s Ida (Nina Arianda), who was a big star back in St. Petersburg — arrive on the scene, the tensions and some old resentments between the comics.

Those resentments are spelled out in flashbacks to the 1930s, when Laurel tried to fight their cheapskate producer Hal Roach (Danny Huston) to renegotiate a salary and creative control comparable to Charlie Chaplin. 

Director Jon S. Baird (“Filth”), working off a script by Jeff Pope (who co-wrote “Philomena” with Coogan), hints at how Laurel and Hardy’s era is fading out, like showing the advancing age of their fan base. The central story line is a snooze, though, largely premised on Laurel keeping from Hardy the truth about their prospective comeback movie.

What enlivens “Stan & Ollie” is the way Baird and his stars stage small moments that serve as built-in homages to Laurel and Hardy’s classic sight gags — for example, at one train station, they lug a heavy trunk up a flight of stairs, only to see it slide back down.

And it helps that Coogan and Reilly work extra hard to squeeze laughs out of those gags, and at distilling Stan and Ollie’s essence in their performances. Make-up and prosthetics help, especially with Reilly’s fat suit for Hardy, but the actors also manage to display that comfortable shorthand long-standing partners develop and maintain in spite of old grudges or the ravages of time.

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‘Stan & Ollie’

★★★

Opened December 25 in select cities; opens Friday, January 25, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and the Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated PG for some language and for smoking. Running time: 97 minutes.