Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

I'm not going to lie, I was not interested in seeing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse at all after seeing the trailer, it just didn't click with me. Then the movie hit theatres everywhere but my country, people were loving it and I decided I'd give it a chance. Too bad my city had screenings only on Christmas and Boxing Day, I was busy with family and stuff, and I missed it. 

This umpteenth movie about your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man follows Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), a teen from Brooklyn struggling with school and friends. One night he sneaks out of his dorm room to visit his uncle, Aron (Mahershala Ali), who brings him to paint graffiti in an abandoned subway station. Miles is bitten by a radioactive spider and Spider-Man. There's already a Spider-Man (voiced by Chris Pine) but he's killed by Kingpin (voiced by Liev Schreiber). Luckily, Kingpin's dimension-crossing super-collider brings in Spider-Man from other universes, and Miles must team up with them to stop Kingpin. 

After countless Spider-Man origin movies —okay, there's three of them, but I feel like there's two too much— Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse offers a fresh, compelling take on the Spider-Man origin story with a compelling, fun and engaging plot that takes some interesting and unexpected turns and doesn't waste time with useless subplots —i.e. romance.

That said, the best part about the film is the characters and the way they and their diversities are handled. Every version of Spider-Man, whether it's Miles or Spider-Woman or Spider-Man noir, is fun, likeable and interesting as they all have their own personality that makes each one of them stand out. Mixing the character from different universes is handled so well and the interaction between characters are fun and entertaining. The villain, on the other hand, has the typical Marvel issue, he lacks depth and characterization. All we learn about Kingpin is that he is an enormous evil man. We learn something, very little, about his family, and that's it. Kingpin is such a menacing man and deserves better than this.

The voice cast does a really good job the highlights being Shameik Moore who embodies very well the personality of Miles, Hailee Steinfeld who is simply delightful as Gwen/Spider-Woman, and Mahershala Ali who is perfect as Uncle Aron —and damn his voice is sexy.

Sony Pictures Releasing

 As for the animation, it's gorgeous —it feels like watching a comic book come to life, literally, and it's awesome. It's the styling animation every movie based on a comic book should have. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse also has plenty of humour; however, while it works wonderfully in the first part, as the story moves forward and become more serious, the humour doesn't work as well. Also, the emotional scenes didn't really work for me.

Green Book (2018)

Although I had read good things about it, specifically about Ali's performance, I wasn't planning on seeing Green Book, in part because it's a Peter Farrelly movie, in part because of all the controversies. Then my cinema decided to have a free preview screening —last time they did this it was 2015 and the movie was Paul Feig's Spy— and I decided to go. 

Set in 1962, the film follows an uneducated racist Italian-American, Frank "Tony Lip" Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), who, after losing his job as a bouncer, becomes the driver of a well educated African-American classical pianist, Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), and takes him on a concert tour into the deep South. 

The plot is very simple and lefts a lot to be desired as it keeps moving forward in a very unrealistic way —the events portrayed aren't unrealistic, but their resolutions are— and it ends up being predictable and quite annoying, to be honest. Also, it has the potential to do much as it's essentially the story of a black man who struggles to gain the respect of his fellow African-Americans while trying to resist the racism that kept him from being as successful as a white man with his talent would have been, but unfortunately, it is always dropped so that Green Book can be a feel-good movie about race relations and friendship.

Overall though, the film still manages to be compelling and engaging and the characters deserve some of the credits for it. While both Tony Lip and Don Shirley embody some of the stereotypes of Italian-American and African-American respectively, at the same time they also shatter them. They feel like caricatures at times, specifically Tony Lip, and yet they are believable and watching these two different men interact and change each other was quite fascinating.

As for the performances, Viggo Mortensen yet again gives a strong performance as he's very convincing as the stereotyped family-devoted Italian-American. It's Mahershala Ali that absolutely steals the show though as he manages to convey the emotions, the sadness, and especially the loneliness of his character through his eyes only.

Universal Pictures

The most astonishing thing about Green Book is that Peter Farrelly directed, co-wrote and co-produced it. He is certainly not famous for making serious movies —it's the opposite, actually, his films are the definition of dumb— so it came as a shock to me that he was able to handle the serious subjects in a serious and yet humorous manner. The balance between drama and comedy isn't perfect, but overall, it works and makes the film quite delightful to watch.

**UPDATED** WATCH - ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL Trailer Debut And Live Q&A

**UPDATED: Check out the trailer and QandA below!!

I've been waiting for a LONG time for this movie and finally, we have the first trailer to take in!

Today at 11am Eastern, James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez, Jon Landau and Rosa Salazar will be hosting the trailer on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AlitaMovie), as well as a question and answer session.

Here's the movie's storyline:
From visionary filmmakers James Cameron (AVATAR) and Robert Rodriguez (SIN CITY), comes ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, an epic adventure of hope and empowerment. When Alita (Rosa Salazar) awakens with no memory of who she is in a future world she does not recognize, she is taken in by Ido (Christoph Waltz), a compassionate doctor who realizes that somewhere in this abandoned cyborg shell is the heart and soul of a young woman with an extraordinary past. As Alita learns to navigate her new life and the treacherous streets of Iron City, Ido tries to shield her from her mysterious history while her street-smart new friend Hugo (Keean Johnson) offers instead to help trigger her memories. But it is only when the deadly and corrupt forces that run the city come after Alita that she discovers a clue to her past – she has unique fighting abilities that those in power will stop at nothing to control. If she can stay out of their grasp, she could be the key to saving her friends, her family and the world she’s grown to love.

The movie also stars Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Jackie Earle Haley, and Ed Skrein.

Set your calendar so you don't miss it!

ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL opens on December 21.