Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, James Dodd, Seth McFarlane, Jeffrey Tambore, John Hurt, Luke Goss

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Mike Mignola

Studio: Universal

I really like Hellboy. I own the graphic novels, the toys, and saw both movies. I thought the first film was uneven, but it was a valiant effort to adapt a tricky property. The comic book's a very mannered affair that doesn't translate visually or storywise to film. This forces the movies to be somewhere between Ghostbusters and Men in Black with a fantasy backbone. Hellboy and his friends crack wise and do battle with a hoard of beautiful looking monsters in our world and the underworld.

It's a difficult balance to maintain when a film has so much going on. It's a film that deals with growing up, being different, golden robots, relationships, drunken monster men, cheap Mexican beer, anti-German sentiment, and the bureaucracy of the man. It succeeds most of the time, but when the film fails, it falls with a pronounced thud. Abe Sapien is a wonderful foil for Hellboy, but he's a complete dud as the star of his own subplot. His romance with an exiled princess just doesn't carry the weight the film wants it to have. It feels forced, and it drags the film down. It's a little too operatic for the blue collar protagonists.

However, Hellboy's relationship with his girlfriend Liz is a strong source of comedy and bickering; it works because they play it mostly funny but keep a core a real emotion in there. That nugget of real emotion drives most of the film's gags, fights, and set pieces; when the film looses that nugget, it weakens.

Writing: Pretty good. I would say it's tighter than the previous film. The dialogue is funnier and the plot is more focused. The villains sound a bit too much like generic fantasy characters, but that's mostly the point. They also provide a great contrast to the very modern style of the protagonists.

Directing: Del Toro and company have created a great look for the film.

Acting: Perlman is excellent as the lead. He was the best about the first movie, and he doesn't dissapoint. He has a certain rough charm as Hellboy that really works on screen, and he can sell it quite well through the make up. He and Doug Jones do an uproarious drunk male bonding scene together that must have been difficult to make seem laid back after a combined 7 hours of makeup between the two of them.

Speaking of which, the cast works together quite nicely, despite most of them being covered in makeup and posthetics. Also, some of them have voice actors doing the dialogue with someone else in the body suit. Somehow, Seth McFarlane and Perlman have a good chemistry despite not being on the set together.

Selma Blair does a good job, and Jeffrey Tambore brings the funny when he gets the chance.

Editing: I could have done without Abe making googy eyes for like fifteen minutes, but otherwise, a decent job.

Sound: Some great little noises for all the creatures, monsters, and magic; it sounded believable.

Soundtrack/Score: Good mood music with some great soundtrack singles. It was also quite nice to hear The Eels in a movie.

Self-Awareness: Yes, it's a weird fucking movie that revels in it's own weird. It also knows how to laugh at the sheer untamed bizarre it's filled with.

Overall Rating: When it works it's wonderful, but a few scenes are definitely better used as bathroom breaks rather than entertainment.

-Pete

Batman and Robin

Starring: George Clooney, Chris O'Donnel, Alicia Silverstone, Uma Thurman, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Director: Joel Shumacher
Writer: Akiva Goldsman
Studio: Time Warner

Do you see Uma Thurman's face in this picture? She's broken, exhausted, and little stupid; this is what watching Batman and Robin does to people. I reviewed the funniest Batman movie every made; it stars Adam West. This film wants to be that film so badly that it hurts, but like any pathetic wannabe, it just tries and fails like a baby bird with one wing. It isn't funny; it's just sad. The near fatal shift in tone for the Batman franchise reaches its nauseating climax here. Batman Forever taught the studio that a cheesy, hideous looking Batman film could make more money and get better reviewed than a dark one. Here is the attempt to take that formula and push it as far as possible.

Nothing mature happens in this film; it's all product placement for happy meal toys, action figures, and credit card companies. Don't forget Batman pulls out a credit card that says fucking, "Batman," on it. I have nothing against a funny Batman story. I love Adam West's take on the character and all that entails, Joker's Millions is a great Batman story from comic books published fifty years ago that's fucking hilarious (yes, Batman is in other things besides movies). The real problem with this film is that it isn't funny; it tries and fails at humor repeatedly with awful puns and contrived visual gags that never deliver a real laugh from the audience.

Then there are the attempts to create drama in the film. Batman and Robin's family dynamic, Alfred's sickness, and Mr. Freezes attempts to save his wife might have worked in a movie that didn't have dancing gorillas, wacky sound effects, horrible puns, Alicia Sylverstone street racing, Batman's credit card, and that dog that gets frozen just before it mictorates on a hydrant. It's insande to think that anyone intended any portion of this film at actually come close to pathos.

Direction: Joel tries and fails to incorporate some heavy CGI into this movie. It might not have aged well, but I doubt the opening sky diving sequence with butterfly Mr. Freeze every looked good. The film really emphasized Shumacher's limitations; he's so bad at creating mood in scenes that he can't even do broad superhero slapstick. I also could have lived without the closeups of Batman and Robin's tight rubber clad crotches and butts. I hear this is a kid's movie Joel or at least a kid's toy commercial.

Most of his attempts at atmosphere are just huge uninteresting wastes of money. He actually cost the production millions of dollars by getting refrigerated sets so you could see the actors breath in Mr. Freeze scenes. Sadly, the lighting was done wrong, and it wasn't visible. He could have just saved everyone the trouble and just burned a pile of millions of dollars and filmed that. I swear that might look cool in a Batman movie.

Writing: Akiva Goldsman might be the anti-christ. The dialog alone in this script is enough to turn the moon to blood and summon the four horsemen. His attempts at comedy consist of puns so bad that Mr. Peabody would slap you in the face for uttering them. (If you don't know who Mr. Peabody is, that's minus 25 Canary points.) The sheer number of puns involving ice, winter, chilling out, staying cool, kicking ice, etc. that come out of Arnold's mouth make me wonder if he was even trying. What do I know? He has an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, but he also did Lost in Space. I don't like any of the scripts for these movies, but somebody sure does. I think that somebody needs a tire iron to the face.

Acting: Clooney is alright, but he could be a million times funnier with something better to work with. Arnold has the worst lines of his career and a costume that even he complained about limiting his acting ability; I can't be too mad at him. He admits he wasn't at the top of his game. Uma plays her role like a drag queen which comes very close to ruing the entire film by her self; it's astonishing how repulsive she as the film's tongue-in-cheek sex pot. Chris and Alicia give performances that killed their respective careers; they should have run for the hills after reading the damn script. The writing and the acting have the same problem, for the most part, none of these people are right for a comedy like this. They can't carry it to the fucking curb, let alone for two hours.

Editing: The editor made the mistake of letting any of this footage survive.

Sound: Lots of stupid cartoon sound effects.

Soundtrack/Score: They milk Danny Elfman's score and upgrade to be even gaudier than before, and the Smashing Pumpkins song is cool.

Self-Awareness: Everybody knows they are making a joking Batman film, but they have no idea that it isn't funny at all.

Overall rating: Fuck this goddamn turd and the hell spawn that birthed it.
-Pete

Lost Boys: The Tribe

Starring: Tad Hilgenbrink, Angus Sutherland, Autumn Reeser, Corey Fucking Feldman
Directed by: PJ Pesce
Written by: Hans Rodionoff
Studio: Hollywood Media Bridge, LB2 Films, blah blah

There's no shortage of painful vampire movies, Pete and I can attest to that much (Lust for Dracula, Ankle Bitters, etc. etc.). The original Lost Boys (1987), despite being a Joel Schumacher production, fairs pretty well given all the detris out there. You got Kiefer Sutherland breaking bitches' necks and puncturing jugulars, Corey Feldman at his finest, boobs, and a catchy theme song. A bunch of people since its successful theater run have realized how this movie's sort of a shiny pebble amid heaps of cat shit and so it is still popular years later. Which, hey, it deserves.

But what it doesn't deserve is the attentions of hack producers and writers, who inevitably see the potential in "re-invigorating" the material for a "new generation to enjoy". I don't think I need to spell-out what all that translates to in the vernacular (hint: it rules everything around me). What we get, then, is a direct-to-video compost pile of cliches and misconstrued cues from the original twenty-plus years later. Lost Boys: The Tribe inherits one of the positive traits from its parent product (i.e. boobs, specifically the luscious Moneca Delain's) but gets recessive, autistic DNA in all other regards.

For instance, replacing Kiefer Sutherland as the badass vampire this time around is Jack Bauer's younger, half-witted half-brother Angus who silted performance and dronish voice approximates a range of roles comprised of complete LSD burnouts. Corey Feldman, who reprises his "iconic" role as Edgar Frog, doesn't look a day older than he did back in the day but somehow over the years lost that quirky-yet-enduring quality he had in the late eighties - he's now kind of a bore. He did, though, manage to train his voice to sound as gravelly as the driveway for a dirt farm. Even the kinda-cool song from the original undergoes an abortion when some d-bags try to give it the POWER FUCK YEAGHHH ROCK makeover.

Another gripe I have with this movie is how the vampires, rather than the (un)living embodiments of youthful excess and rebellion they were in the previous incarnation, now act like frat boy cockheads more than anything else. While David (Kiefer)'s crew lived in a cave near the ocean filled with rust-encrusted emblems of consumerism, Shane (Angus)'s chill out in a multi-level underground complex fitted with HD TVs, an X-Box 360 and IKEA furniture. And while the undead from the first one are truly excited by their immortality (e.g. they hang from elevated railroad and then intentionally fall into a foggy abyss), the delta-delta-fi assholes from this one are content with just fucking around with the local police and stabbing each other in the gut while giggling like fools.

Schumacher et al are the only ones to gain from this shitpan of film, since it will most likely drive people (such as myself) to go and rent the original.

Writing: The story is a dumbed-down, ugly version of the first one with more WHACKY HIJINKS and less cooky 80s fun. The dialog is groan worthy.

Direction: Pesce really conveys the experience of turning into a vampire with slo-mo and simple lense distortions. Wowee.

Acting: Everybody was lame - Autumn Reeser was cute (as she always is) but that wasn't enough. But I'd rather blame the writing since she so purdy. :-3

Editing: There's a whole subplot with Autumn and Tad's aunt that there to set up a single, stupid fucking joke at the end of the movie. yeah, editing.

Sound: The usual CHEST STAB and POLICE BOLTER sounds galore.

Soundtrack/Score: CRYYYYYYYYYY LITTA SISTAAAAAHHH

Self-Awareness: "Hey guys, this is the sequel, let's just make a bunch of references to the first one yay."

Overall rating: **

~Ian