Mostly About Movies

[thedeadlyhook]

Belated Very Happy Birthdays to germaine_pet, lordshiva, diachrony, ladyk8, fenchurche, eurydice72, and Happy Birthday in Advance to flake_sake!

We had a locksmith come in to fix our laundry room door, which had mysteriously decided to lock itself yesterday, trapping a load of wet clothes in the dryer and us out in the hall yanking at the frozen doorknob for, I kid you not, hours on end. The landlord's whole family eventually got in on this action, which could have very easily ended in breaking down the door with a fire ax--that lock was not budging--until Toys came up with the idea of pulling the door hinges and wriggling the door loose that way. And now we have a shiny, new unlocking knob. This, in our house, is what currently counts as drama.

Saw Hellboy 2 the other night. This will probably be a minority opinion, but I was pretty disappointed.

This may seem a fatuous argument to be making about a summer "blockbuster" movie, but although Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is far from the worst action movie I've ever sat through (Batman and Robin might hold that title), it's yet another one of those million-dollar-visuals-in-service-of-a-buck-fifty-story. And not a very original story at that - the last time I saw the assemble-pieces-of-the-magical-item-to-gain-great-power plotline (complete with symbiotic twins, which means yes, I guessed the ending long in advance) was in the Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture anime, although as a videogame-derived production, I really doubt that story was original then, either. Hellboy 2 plays out like a long videogame cutscene, in fact: the main baddie is a Devil May Cry-esque videogame character who spends his spare time practicing martial arts shirtless, and starts a war with the human world with two, count 'em two, followers to back him up. The rest is just one confrontation after another, and trying to think about the story in terms of point or theme will just make you depressed. Like, a whole goblin market coexisting alongside humanity in modern NYC, cool! Only... uh, it's just sort of there for atmosphere or something, or to remind you of Spirited Away, or Neverwhere, or a dozen other things, and there's a giant plant elemental straight out of Princess Mononoke, although never mind the ecological theme that its presence raises... anyway, Love Conquers All. Or something.

And the made-up mythology about the Golden Army... you know, I've only just identified what annoyed me about that. It's such a trope now, the legend that turns out to be a factual document. Oh, I just happen to have a book right here that explains everything about this legend you've never previously heard of before, and of course there's only one version of said legend, and actually, it's absolutely true! It's only very slight variant on the old saw of They Wrote What They Know, aka All Great Artists Were 100% Literal. From Shakespeare to Elvis, they all just looked out the window and recorded what they saw or imitated someone else, no creativity required. In fantasy, I find this a particularly soul-killing assertion - the inexplicable doesn't exist. And there's no real awe of discovery either, if everything's treated like pre-observed phenonmena. (This is a major reason, if anyone's interested, why I've never been able to get into Supernatural, btw. And yes, it bugged me in Buffy, too.)

And oh, let's not forget the gender stereotyping! Despite a leather outfit, gun, and superpowers, fire-mutant Liz's whole role in the film is to be the emo girlfriend, who spends the final big battle scene - in fact, most of the film - just standing around. We get an utterly lame princess who has no royal authority whatsoever to measure up to her (twin!) brother's, so it never occurs to her to say, gee, I could claim control of the Golden Army too. The things these women don't do during the film count as actual plot holes, but we're not supposed to notice that because women are supposed to stand around being passive, yes?

My eyes, they hurt from the rolling, my teeth, from the gritting.

So... yeah. It's not awful, just... a letdown. It could've, and should've, been better.

Alternatively, let me put in a plug for the Hellboy comics, which remain thoroughly enjoyable. All hail Mike Mignola as a master of atmosphere.

Guillermo Del Toro, for shame.

Serendipitiously, on teevee the other night was The Brothers Grimm, a Terry Gilliam movie Toys and I had been meaning to see, which just happened to cover some rather simliar ground to Hellboy 2, but was the polar opposite on a lot of the above points that bugged me. It featured a cool heroine who actually did stuff, genuine scares and surprises instead of seen-it-before spectacle - some of them unutterably gross, class-A, kindertrauma-category nightmare fuel - and the two "expert" brothers of the title aren't 18th-Century Men in Black, but... okay, I don't want to spoil it. "Legends" turn out to be "real," but not real to the letter of the texts they're reading from, and the whole thing is a delirious slurry of every fairy tale you've ever read. Not a great film by any means, but it had more visual originality than Hellboy, and boasts the late, lamented Heath Ledger as one of its two stars. With a caution about the upsetting imagery, I'd recommend it as an interesting double-bill - compare and contrast!

Now, for a change of pace, one of the pre-movie trailers at Hellboy was for the remake of Death Race 2000, an old Roger Corman movie. For those who've never seen it, it's a black comedy about a coast-to-coast auto race in which drivers get extra points for killing pedestrians (starring David Carradine of Kung Fu fame!). The point of this film, driven home for you by a selection of broadly glib TV announcers, is that this near-future culture is violent, violent, violent, a social commentary that fits in the same spreadsheet column as Rollerball (the James Caan original), the '80s Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man, and Escape from New York. Judging from this trailer, though, the new Death Race is gonna revolve around the usual this-time-it's-personal manpain, and will play the race absolutely straight.

It's official: you can't make make future parodies anymore. No one gets the joke. It's not a joke. We live there.

And then, I remember that Iron Man is still playing in theaters, and that I really enjoyed The Incredible Hulk. And that's when things start to look up.

I'm gonna go read some more Doctor Strange now.

Comments

[herself_nyc]

Drama!
I skipped your movie reviews, but I wanted you to know I've been thinking about you the last few days … I miss you!

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

But the movie reviews are where all my good writing is!

Miss seeing you around the Internets, too. It's been one busy summer; I barely have time to think lately. Did your window situation finally get resolved?

[herself_nyc]

OK, I will read your review!

And yes, the windows are in ... and of course now the co-op board is disputing with the windows company because they don't fit right and aren't as specified and blah blah blah ....

[herself_nyc]

Yes, your writing about movies is wonderful! Alas for me that I seldom know what your references are, because I'm virtually illiterate to entire genres (horror, fantasy, anime, comics) that you talk so cogently about.

Did you review Wall-E? (Which I haven't seen yet but will.)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Wall-E yet, but I intend to - more than one acquaintance whose opinion I respect has called it "a masterpiece," so that would count, I think, as a hearty recommendation.

And thanks for saying I speak cogently about all this material. For me, it all just sounds like ranting, so I'm constantly curious about how it might come off to an "outsider."

[herself_nyc]

I guess one person's rant is another's closely-argued opinion piece.