Alita: Battle Angel (2019, Robert Rodriguez)

Like a much improved Ready Player One, stupider but better in every other way. Or it could be this year’s Valerian, but in that movie you felt the hugeness of its universe, and this one feels like a video-game future city full of NPCs, with only ten real people who keep bumping into each other. Anyway, I heard Rodriguez made a campy, awesome sci-fi comic action flick with producer James Cameron and his Avatar effects team, rushed out to watch this in 3D, and was greatly rewarded.

Sam Adams in Slate:

There are moments so purely ingenuous they make you laugh with a mixture of disbelief and glee, like when Jeff Fahey shows up as a redneck bounty hunter who keeps a pack of cybernetic hounds on hand. It’s goofy as hell and borderline inexcusable at times, but it’s also kind of glorious.