Movie Blogs - From Around The Web
Latest Movie Blog posts by
Confessions of a Film Critic - John Maguire
The Devil's In The Details
Having already shown us Hellboy’s beginnings, summoned from hell by Rasptin (to help the Nazis fight WWII), Del Toro opens with his adopted father Professor Bruttenholm (John Hurt) telling the red-faced, horned and now five year old demon a bedtime story. Here, in a beautifully realised stop-motion animation, we see the origins of the story to come – an ancient war between humanity and goblins - while teasing us with just how achingly gorgeous it will be.
In the short version, man and fairy share an uneasy truce, we get the cities, they keep the forests. But humanity has reneged on the deal, and destroyed the natural world. In an effort to save his people, Prince Nuada (Luke Gross) defies his father the king of the goblins and plots to awaken the Golden Army: 70 times 70 robot warriors buried under the Giant’s Causeway in Antrim. Standing against him in the upcoming battle is the fire-engine faced Hellboy (Ron Perlman), his fire-spewing lover Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) and super-intelligent merman Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), who all work for a secret government agency, keeping the real world safe from fantastical creatures. Tensions mount when their boss (the very funny Jeffrey Tambor) drafts in a new mission specialist, an ectoplasmic German called Johann Krauss who has been transformed into a wisp of shape-shifting smoke, trapped inside a clanking bell-diver’s suit.
Ron Perlman gives another winning performance as the cigar-choming, wise-crack spouting anti-hero, his massive chest carved with arcane tattoos and his right arm cast in crunching concrete. He’s tough on the outside, but tender underneath, loving kittens and Barry Manilow and desperate not to lose the love of his life, Liz. This romantic element is sustained with surprising effectiveness throughout the adventure to come, a sign of the film’s true intentions, to marry explosive action and eye-popping monsters with the grand themes of love, unity and ecology. This last element, the death of the natural world, is lyrically communicated in a vast sequence where Hellboy must battle a leafy, green God of the Woods and later, strike a bargain with the Angel of Death, a gruesome creature with a hundred eyes strewn across its black wings.
There are echoes of the classics of fantasy cinema throughout Hellboy II; a princess carrying a powerful charm from Star Wars, the half-forgotten fairy folk asserting their right to live as they do in Narnia while the endlessly fascinating Troll Market brings to mind the hidden places of Harry Potter. Del Toro isn’t paying homage; he goes deeper than that, taking as his source the stories that inspired these stories. Filled with moments of genuine visual wonder, the film is a unique accomplishment, standing in stark contrast to the soulless production-line of summer blockbuster entertainment, made to achieve a profit margin. Del Toro has loftier targets to hit.
This is a filmmaker with a unique way of seeing the world, but better than that, he has an innate understanding of how myths legends work in the mind of the viewer. He knows what it is about legends that entertain us and how, when properly told, they can still deliver powerful messages.
Continue Reading
Mon, 25 Aug 2008
Recent Posts:
- Bra Vo
Wed, 20 Aug 2008
- Mommy Issues
Sat, 16 Aug 2008
- ET, Phone In
Tue, 12 Aug 2008
- Highly Strung
Mon, 04 Aug 2008
- Jokers Wild
Mon, 28 Jul 2008
Latest Movie Blog posts by
D.C Girl @ The Movies
ARRGH &%^#! BLOGGER!
I am REALLY going to have to expedite my move to wordpress, because blogger sucks ass.
Too those who've been scratching their heads over the strange changes in the site?
Yeah.
Frustrations abound. Look for an official clickable banner and such, very soon.
I'm also compiling another list post. So, look for that some time this week.
Thanks, for your continued patience, people.
Continue Reading
Fri, 22 Aug 2008
Recent Posts:
- TROPIC THUNDER
Sun, 17 Aug 2008
- THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS
Sun, 17 Aug 2008
- DEATH. STOP IT.
Mon, 11 Aug 2008
- THE 7 DEADLY (I WISH, DAMMIT) MOVIEGOING SINS
Fri, 08 Aug 2008
- THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR
Sun, 03 Aug 2008
Latest Movie Blog posts by
Denerstein Unleashed
"Traitor" winds up betraying itself
For a movie steeped in such incendiary issues as terrorism and the battle for the soul of Islam, "Traitor" seems awfully marginal. A thriller with a surfeit of plot twists, "Traitor" tries hard to deliver the right message, but I agree with those who feel the screenplay shortchanges both its thriller and moral dimensions. "Traitor" also is the first movie in which the talented Don Cheadle gives a less than fascinating performance. Cheadle portrays Samir Horn, a Muslim man whose Sudanese father was murdered by terrorists. Horn later found his way into the U.S. Special Forces. Cheadle's difficulty may have something to do with the ambiguity that fogs the lens through which we see his character. The always emaciated Guy Pearce signs on as an FBI agent, assigned to tracking Horn and the Qaeda-like cell that recruits him. For all its plot ploys, the most surprising thing about "Traitor" has nothing to do with what transpires on screen. It's this: Steve Martin, still best known for comedy, wrote the story on which director Jeffrey Nachmanoff based the screenplay. And, no, there's not a laugh in sight....
Continue Reading
Wed, 27 Aug 2008
Recent Posts:
- Movies make a splash at the DNC
Tue, 26 Aug 2008
- Convention or internment camp -- and other weirdness from the city of Denver
Sun, 24 Aug 2008
- Another Roth novel loses in translation
Fri, 22 Aug 2008
- Skating on thin economic ice
Fri, 22 Aug 2008
- Time flies when you're in the dark
Mon, 18 Aug 2008
Latest Movie Blog posts by
Daily Film Dose
MARRIED LIFE
Married Life (2008) dir. Ira Sachs
Starring: Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Rachel McAdams, Patricia Clarkson
**
There’s much good talent wasted in “Married Life”, a 50's period film about a philandering husband who conspires to off his wife. Hitchcock or the Coen Bros would make mince meat with the script. Mr. Sachs’s film is just an unformed slab of raw beef.
Harry Allen (Chris Cooper) is unhappy in his marriage. In fact he already has a mistress, a gorgeous gal half his age, Kay (Rachel McAdams). Harry confides in his buddy, Richard (Pierce Brosnan), about his other woman. But when Richard first meets Kay, he is instantly smitten with her as well. Unbeknownst to Harry, Richard quietly...
To read the remainder of this fine article, please click on 'view original post', or go to www.dailyfilmdose.com...
Continue Reading
Thu, 28 Aug 2008
Recent Posts:
- CELEBRITY
Wed, 27 Aug 2008
- CHICAGO 10
Tue, 26 Aug 2008
- WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?
Mon, 25 Aug 2008
- THE DOORS
Sun, 24 Aug 2008
- EASY LIVING
Sat, 23 Aug 2008
Latest Movie Blog posts by
I don't like Renee Zellweger
"Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild"
But acting aside, this movie casts more aspersion on gays than any homophobic Sandler flick ever could. It successfully perpetuates the worst sort of stereotypes that exist, encourages the worst of behaviors that are rapidly eating away at the gay community, but moving beyond my moral grandstanding here, on a base level, this just ain't funny. The jokes are dated (and in one galling case, stolen verbatim from "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion"), eye-rolling, adolescent, and when all else fails, nauseating. While the first film had a predictable "scat" joke, here we're treated to filets of skin being ripped off an asscheek, a character with shit smeared on their upper lip, and an extended sequence of characters repeatedly vomiting on each other. The gross-out humor here recalls Tom Green's "Freddy Got Fingered" more than anything, only without that film's inspired madness and borderline-disturbing grotesquerie. By the time "Gay Sequel" got around to said group-vomiting scene, I wasn't repulsed or offended, I just stared at the screen in disbelief, wondering, "who finds this shit funny?"
"Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild" opens tomorrow, August 29th, at the Quad in New York, the Sunset 5 in Los Angeles and the Gateway in Ft. Lauderdale. It expands to San Francisco and Chicago on Sept. 5, Philadelphia and Palm Springs on Sept. 12, Washington DC and Boston on Sept. 19, and Dallas and Atlanta on Sept. 26.
Continue Reading
Thu, 28 Aug 2008
Recent Posts:
- Catch-Up: Part 2
Tue, 26 Aug 2008
- A Little Bit of Catch-Up...
Wed, 13 Aug 2008
- Only 67 Days Till "BHC"
Tue, 29 Jul 2008
- "Step Brothers"
Fri, 25 Jul 2008
- "American Teen"
Thu, 24 Jul 2008
Latest Movie Blog posts by
blog.filmjabber.com
House Bunny, The (2008) Movie Review
House Bunny, The Movie review: C
Review by Robert Bell (C)
The House Bunny is Legally Blonde's slightly retarded and far more profane cousin who would likely get drunk at a kegger, show everyone her famous ping-pong ball trick and cry about it the next day. It's kind of amusing in its own embarrassing way but lacks any real meaning or sense of self.
Without Anna Faris' unique comic sensibilities there would be very little to redeem this somewhat offensive, formulaic yarn outside of a very large girl attempting to seduce a classmate by indicating that she needs to lay a deuce. All progression and character motivation - regardless of endless feminist rants from secondary characters - stem from a desire to please and attract men. The overall message seems to be something akin to “you don't need to show the world your cooter to get respect, a little cleavage and butt-cheek is more than enough”.
This fish-out-of-water comedy follows Shelley (Anna Faris) after her 27th birthday when she is chagrined to find that she has been evicted from her home; the Playboy mansion. Desperate to find a new home, she stumbles across a college campus and weasels her way into the role of “House Mother” to a sorority filled with dysfunctional social misfits in desperate need of a makeover.
Roughly following Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - if they were named: Preggers (Katharine McPhee), Crippley (Rumer Willis), Dorky (Emma Stone), Butchy (Kat Dennings), Stinky, Mutey and Dumpy - there is a reinvention of the freaks urged by the inevitable fear of losing the sorority house to a group of preppy skanks led by Mrs. Hagstrom (Beverley D'Angelo). Throw in a requisite love interest in the form of Colin Hanks and the formula is complete.
Despite a fairly crappy, by-the-numbers script, Anna Faris does manage to make some of the obvious jokes unique and amusing. There are few actresses that could pull off the Marilyn Monroe standing over a vent gag with any sort of originality but Faris manages. There is an insight and intelligence to her dippy reactions and blank stares that makes it all that much droller.
Cameos in the form of Hugh Hefner and those three hookers from his reality show appropriately but annoyingly make their way on screen and thankfully the obnoxious Kendra doesn't laugh or speak much.
Those who like Anna Faris will forgive the film many of its faults given her abilities, however, those who do not care for Ms. Faris will most certainly find this movie unbearable as it is essentially a retread of Sydney White with more fake boobs and pubic hair jokes....
Continue Reading
2008-08-22
Recent Posts:
- Mirrors (2008) Movie Review
2008-08-20
- Henry Poole Is Here (2008) Movie Review
2008-08-17
- Tropic Thunder (2008) Movie Review
2008-08-09
- Baghead (2008) Movie Review
2008-08-04
- Pineapple Express (2008) Movie Review
2008-08-04
Movie Search
