Hellboy II: The Golden Rehash

• Huge monster squirming around New York wreaking havok? Check
• Invincible army that's been locked away for a bajillion years and now someone is gonna use it? Check
• Little monsters that fly around and appear cute until some nobody comes up and says "Oh look, he's cute, he's not gonna hurt us" then the little monster bares its teeth and rips the guy's head off? Check
• Underground black market with all sorts of colorful characters and bizarre goods? Check
• White skinned elf types with white contact lenses just like the characters from Guillermo's Blade movies? Check
• Misanthropic smartass main character who is impervious to verbal attacks by damsels or physcial ones by villains, and uses big guns like Will Smith and acts like him too [in Men In Black]? Check
• Tin Man type character who just wants someone to love and relate to? Check

I enjoyed Hellboy II: The Golden Army. It was a lot of fun and exciting and beautiful to look at, but it had almost nothing I hadn't seen before. Whether it be rips from Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, National Treasure, The Mummy, Cloverfield/The Host, or Guillermo's previous endeavors, I just found myself yawning at the scenes I'd seen before again and again.

Many people will credit Guillermo Del Toro with his visionary creativity and inspired art direction in movies like Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, but this in it of itself does not equate to a good film. The creatures of Hellboy II were unique and refreshing, but put those creatures in environments and plots I've seen a hundred times before, and it adds up to nothing for me. I'll give credit where credit is due (in the art department), but the story department was surely lacking.

All the reviews I'm reading say "ooh la la look at lil Guillermo I haven't seen creatures like that since the Cantina scene from Star Wars a while back". Yes, the creatures were very original, but thats exactly what I expected from Del Toro. After seeing Pan's Labyrinth, I was disgusted [in a good way] at some of the creatures he cooked up. Among them the "skin man" with the eyes on his hands. I found the lack of eyes on the facial area very cool, and terrifiying, and it definitely challenged the way I think about animals and evolution. Ok, interesting. But then here comes Guillermo's next movie. I thought the Angel of Death (pictured above) in Hellboy II looked awesome, but I'm starting to think that among other things, the "eyes on the hands/wings" trick is all Guillermo's got. He invents weird shaped creatures and apparently expects that the sum of all his bizarre creatures will add up to a solid film. Apparently the critics agree. Del Toro's directing is excellent, but without a real story I'm not sold.

The funniest part about all of it is that before Hellboy, a trailer rolled for the new Mummy movie and sure enough in it too there is some crazy millenia-old army that is going to be revived by Jet Li. The special effects look stunning, but that's where the depth of it ends, it appears.

Juno - I Really Liked It

So I saw "Juno" the other night, and it was pretty much exactly what I was expecting. And that's a good thing! A feelgood movie with some depth, some humor, and some great music. Acting was also pretty good too. It was very interesting to see J.K. Simmons playing somebody else besides the protagonists' jackass boss. Instead this time he was a compassionate father with a love for heating and cooling, and he got the job done surprisingly effectively. Ellen Page and Michael Cera were equally compelling, even though Cera is already flirting with the line of becoming a innocent white-boy character actor. Also, any movie with a pubescent indian kid saying "I think I'm gonna stop wearing underwear so I can raise my sperm count" is gonna float my boat.The real reason I wanted to write this post though, was because of the music in this movie. Juno's soundtrack is similarly indie in the vein of Garden State or Little Miss Sunshine but without as much variety or mainstream sound (like a song that could be on the radio but just isn't discovered yet), and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Moldy Peaches set the pace with some great songs that really make it seem like the movie could not survive without them. I was also very pleasantly surprised to hear a few Belle and Sebastian hits. While not my favorites, they got the job done and showed some real thought had gone into the soundtrack. At several points in the movie I felt that a Tilly And The Wall song would've fit PERFECTLY into the mood and feelings of the movie. All of their songs are about teenagers touching and doing scandalous things like that. Especially on their first album, Wild Like Children, which is incredible by the way. That album probably could've stood on its own as the soundtrack for this movie, but I'm happy they put some effort into the soundtrack.The songs in the movie are weird in a good kind of way, especially the first one during the opening sequence, but as the movie goes on you really start to feel like you're living the moments they're living in high school all over again (although high school was only last year). All in all, I was impressed by the movie, and Diablo Cody's incredibly quick, witty, and slang-ridden screenplay really represented teenager-dom with the kind of accuracy Superbad did, although obviously with much less vulgarity and profanity. When I got home, I quickly ran to the computer so I could find some ukulele chords or a tab for Anyone Else But You by The Moldy Peaches. All I found were guitar chords, but they work just fine. The lines go G  C  G  C  G  C  and on and on its very easy and fun to play. "You're a part time lover and a full time friend," the first line of the song, so perfectly fits this movie. Go see this movie!