Hellboy II: The Golden Army: On simply an aesthetic basis, I feel that Hellboy is the most successful comic book character to make the jump from page to screen. Ron Perlman's take on the gruff demon is once again pitch perfect and director Guillermo del Toro provides a visual feast where everything is ratcheted up from the pretty damned good 2004 film: the humor, love story, weird creatures, and CGI are all much stronger. I had a great time watching this yesterday, especially one particular scene involving Hellboy, Abe, beer, and Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You." Go see it.
Across the Universe: While I was predestined to hate this movie - it involves hippies and an enroachment on the Beatles canon, after all - there were some good parts (notably, the "I Want To Hold Your Hand" sequence in the beginning). But this was way too long with too many disposable storylines and characters. An example would be Prudence, who I suspect was put into the movie just so "Dear Prudence" could be shoehorned in, suddenly disappears midway through the movie. Hello goodbye.
4 comments:
thats so interesting that YOURE the big beatle fan and yet i'm the one that loved loved loved that movie. it has a good shot at movie of the year '08 for me.
hmmmm.
and for the record, i loooved prudence. whether relevant to the storyline or not, i loved her. "i want to hold your hand" with her singing may have been the best scene.
i still say eugene hutz would have been the perfect mr. kite.
Strange how that worked out, huh?
That sequence was the best in the movie and Prudence's voice wasn't bad. It's just that she up and disappeared once her titular song was over that just bugged me.
And the Mr. Kite part was entirely unnecessary. It didn't further the plot whatsoever. Again, I think it was put there so more songs could be added and a couple of Big Stars (Eddie Izzard, Bono) could be showcased.
"Hey, Bono wants us to open up our minds."
"Let's take a bus to some drug dude's place!"
"I don't want to stay here."
"Let's go home."
It could've been easily excised.
Well...considering that only one of these films has made it to my little rock, I will refrain from commenting on the other.
In short, Hellboy freakin ROCKED!
I could not agree with you more Micah, this is by far the best comic-to-screen transition out there. I dragged three other people who had not read the comics and had not seen the first movie and they absolutely loved it. The Manilow scene was my favorite...especially when he did the "stagger-step" down the stairs before his fight with that goth-looking creep.
Good to hear that you 3rd World citizens have access to Hellboy!
I may actually see this again in theaters, which I very rarely do (although this year is out of the norm, as I double dipped on both Iron Man and Indiana Jones). I just wish we had a plethora of cheap theaters down here like they have in Columbus.
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