Busy extended weekend for watching movies. On Thursday, I saw Hancock; today, Yoko and I went to see Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and Wanted; saving Dark Knight for next Thursday. Short, spoiler-free reviews follow:
Hancock: I had little in the way of high hopes for this from the get-go, but I'm happy to report that it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it might be. I still nearly walked out after the first ten minutes, but that's because, well, it was beginning to look like a super-powered version of The Pursuit of Happyness or Hitch or a reverse on Bagger Vance. Uberman has problems, loses groove finds sidekick (what Spike Lee has called The Magical Negro, but which turns out can be just about any ethnic, racial, or sexual orientation-related stereotype; cf. the gay boyfriends of Sex And The City or Hancock's environmentally-conscious-and-conflict-resolving-emasculated-liberal white guy buddy) who helps get groove back. Fortunately, I stuck around, and the movie didn't turn into another rehashing of the same old stuff. I can't say I was surprised by much of anything in the film, but I thought the physics were good (especially for a superhero film), and the movie remained consistent to its internal logic and the logic of the genre. Either catch a matinee or see it on a really big TV; not worth full price, and a 27-inch TV will lack the scale.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army: I did have hopes for this. Visually, del Toro's created another stunning tableau of the weird and wonderful. Unfortunately, the plot (and the acting; I know her character's a pyrokinetic, but does Selma Blair have to take loads of Prozac before the shooting?) was just a little too... I dunno, flat. Like so many things in Mike Mignola's comic, the settings (and the set-ups) are gorgeous, but the material just doesn't seem to follow through on the promises. Most disappointing is Jeffrey Tambor reprising his role as government nanny; I thought we'd resolved his issues with Big Red in the previous film, yet here he is, all ready to be a weeney again-- and a neurotic one at that. Oh, well. Again, visually, this is a lovely piece. Matinee or big-screen TV.
Wanted: The only rated R feature of the lot, and the most compelling, visually. Although it lifts its name and huge chunks of the premise from the comic book by Mark Millar, it eschews that works' reliance on a familiarity with the DC universe in favor of its own mythology, woven, so to speak, from a mostly unique spool of thread. This movie is sheer eye-candy from beginning to end. There's really nothing more to it, and that's all right; that's clearly what the director and producers intended. Nowhere near as funny as, say Shoot 'Em Up, Wanted still manages to make much of the blood and gore it spatters across the screen (and the cars, and the board-rooms, and the offices, and the streets, etc.). It's a blood and violence festival, and its core message is pretty reprehensible, and yet, it's still a lot of fun. Well, if you like that sort of thing. Matinee or better yet, big TV and a DVD player so's you can skip around a lot.
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