Alita

  (IMDB)

ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL-2019-In the year 2506 after a great war with Mars, a United Republics of Mars scientist (Christopher Waltz) rescues a cyborg girl from a junk pile and calls her Alita (after his dead daughter). She (Rosa Salazar) doesn't remember who she is but has memories of fighting a battle on the moon. Meanwhile the scientist's ex-wife (Jennifer Connelly) runs Motorball, cyborg battle game owned by Vector (Mahershala Ali). A young guy Hugo (Keean Johnson) tries to help Alita regain her memory but he also works for Vector stealing parts from other cyborgs. 

It turns out Alita is an URM “berserker”, the most advanced cyborg ever. There are a lot of fights. She even fights after being chopped up in pieces. The real villain is an immortal called Nova (un-billed Edward Norton) . This movie is not bad but it kind of slows down after Alita fights a bounty hunter Zapan (Ed Skrein) when Hugo is branded a criminal. It retains a lot of anime and manga elements but I don't think it deserves a sequel. It was director Robert Rodriguez's biggest hit although there is some controversy over whether it made money or not.

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George Pal and The Moon

DESTINATION MOON-1950-In the near future a rocket is set to the moon but doesn't make it. Dr. Cargraves (Warner Anderson) suspects sab-otage. Two years later he and the designer of the rocket's engine General Thayer (Tom Pow-ers) convince aircraft honcho Jim Barnes (John Archer) to help gather private investors to back their new design (called “Luna”). However, public outcry over radioactivity leakage seems to doom the project. Barnes decides to circum-⁹vent all the red tape and take off in 17 hours! He, Cargraves and Thayer enlisted skeptical Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson) as the radio operator (“It'll never budge”). After some quick goodbyes and just beating a court order not allowing them to go, they take off and head to the moon. All goes well despite trouble with g-force and weightlessness until it's learned Sweeney put too much grease on an antenna and it has to be fixed. So three of them take a space walk on the side of the ship. Thayer is almost sent adrift in space but Barnes saves him with a pretty clever use of an oxygen tank. The group make a precarious moon landing and two of them go out and do some exploring. After everyone treks around Barnes is informed that they wasted too much fuel on their botched up landing and may not have enough to take off. They have to get rid of all non-essential equipment but it's not enough. One of them must stay behind! While the three scientists argue which one of them should be sacrificed. Joe takes it upon himself to be the one but Barnes' quick thinking saves Joe and they all return to Earth heroes. Woody Woodpecker is seen in a film explaining how going to the moon is possible.

Produced by George Pal, DESTINATION MOON is a serious early look into how space travel would be. Its level headed script doesn't go over the top in speculation and employs more science than fiction. This is probably due to the fact that it's based on a novel by the legendary Robert Heinlein who also co-wrote the screenplay! It should be boring but director (and former actor) Irving Pichel puts a lot of good SFX to use and doesn't let all the scientific talk bog down the story line.  

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