(2008) dir Guillermo del Toro - w/ Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Doug Jones & Doug Jones, James Dodd, Jeffrey Tambor, Anna Walton, Briane Steele, and John Hurt.  Why did Mr. Wink have to be Evil!

Synopsis: Evil elvy-type wants to take back earth from greedy, selfish humans.  Wants to do so through battle.  Using magical invincible robot sorts of things (the Golden Army).  Selling point: it’s an invincible army.  Cons: wake of utter destruction.  Secret illegal task-force to the rescue!  (Hopefully.)  Hellboy & Co. spring into action.

Review: What’s surprising is that Hellboy II did not in fact have ten times the production budget of the first Hellboy — because that’s what it feels like.  The creatures are astonishing, as is the detail of all the characters.  You could cut out the audio and dub in pretty much any movie’s dialogue, and Hellboy II would still be worth watching.

Which is good, because the story actually isn’t all that great.  Story-wise, I’m actually more fond of the first Hellboy.  Hellboy II has some interesting, intricate points, but is generally quite derivative, predictable, and bland, even.  The dialogue is occasionally phenomenal, and some scenes are ridiculously awesome–but then the movie gets dragged down by other scenes, and by awful, stilted dialogue.  Then there’s a fight, or a new monster, or a new world, and the story doesn’t actually matter that much.  Because the creatures are spectacular.

Hellboy II is actually okay, and I enjoyed watching it a great deal.  But given the performance of the first movie, and given some of del Toro’s other recent excursions, I’d expected much more.  Still, I’d sit through a Hellboy III.  And IV.  We’ll see about a V.

Rating: [•••½] out of [•••••]

(2005) dir Paul Tarantino - w/ Benjamin John Carillo as would-be upwardly mobile insurance agent, Mark Aiken as Dougie, Kristi Clainos as Sarah, and Ralph Lister as, apparently, “The Man”.  I don’t really remember who that might be.

Synopsis: A happy office drone wants a little more out of his workplace environment, and feels he might get a better job elsewhere.  No troubles so far.  He gets recommended a headhunter by a client/friend, and figures–why not!  It can’t hurt to look.  Naturally, he gets a new job right away.  The new headhunter really did the trick!  The hours are a little bit… strange.  And the co-workers are… well…  They’re strange, too.  But the money’s good, am I right?  What’s a little curse, when you’re laughing all the way to the bank?  Or grave…  Puns, horror, and camp follow.

Review: As you might guess from the DVD cover, this is not a high-production-value film.  It’s not, say, Rosemary’s Baby. So what I’m about to say may come as a surprise.

This is an excellent film!

Not exactly good.  But simultaneously earnest and campy, in all the right places.  “Headhunter” knows when to downplay the supernatural, and traffic in innuendo and good old-fashioned story-telling instead.  (Don’t worry–there are some special effects.  And they are very special.)

You have your standard murder curse haunting story, more or less.  The people involved do stupid things, but not unreasonably stupid things. (If it were a true story, and you believed in curses, their actions would be 100% believable.)  Most of the movie takes place in office buildings and parking lots and very ordinary places, and without any special effects whatsoever.  Which is one of the movie’s saving graces; it’s campy when it should be, and silly, and ridiculous (the baby? the lightning?!) — but restrained at other times.  There are a number of scenes that are surprisingly effective despite the lack of any special effects; one scene involves a cursed key-chain.

I have to say, this is a kind of hidden treat.  (I was actually expecting it to be unrelentingly awful, and found myself drawn in, and completely entertained.)

Rating: [•••½] out of [•••••]

Extra: It’s also a little bit adorable that the quote from the movie that someone saw fit to add to imdb’s “memorable quotes” section is:

Ben Caruso: I need you to do a little poking around.
Scott: That’s my speciality.

Because, really?

(2003) dir Jean-Paul Rappeneau - w/ Isabelle Adjani, Virginie Ledoyen, Gerard Depardieu, Yvan Attal, Peter Coyote, and Gregori Derangere as the hapless writer.  Starring some jugs of water as Heavy Water.

Synopsis: A scientist and his assistants, an actress, a writer framed for murder and his fellow escapee, a minister… and of course a Nazi spy.  In France, on the eve of World War II.

Review: I watched the preview for this movie, and knew I had to see it.  Then, months later, the movie in front of me, I read the description and was completely baffled.  I wanted to see this movie?

As it turns out, I did.

The movie has a richly textured plot — as it opens, a famous actress calls on a childhood neighbor and sweetheart to help cover up a murder (or was it?), which, in the middle of a rainstorm in the middle of a night, ends with him being stopped by the police, and arrested as a dead man falls out of his trunk.  Simple enough.  Throw in chance encounters, friendships formed over adversity, a looming war, political machinations of the rich and powerful, science, and you’re on a roll.  But the best thing about “Bon Voyage” is undoubtedly its characters.  They’re compelling, absurd, and full.  They’re awkward and uncertain and, even in the least likely scenarios, believable.  The brisk pace of the movie and the cartwheeling plot only helps things along.

Rating: [••••] out of [•••••]

(2008) dir. Jon Avnet - w/ Robert De Niro and Al Pacino; also Brian Dennehy, Donnie Wahlberg, John Leguizamo, Carla Gugino, & 50 Cent.

Synopsis: Two seasoned detectives stumble across the case of a “mysterious” vigilante… who only kills bad guys!

Review: “Righteous Kill” has exactly one good idea.  And unfortunately, that idea is: put Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the same movie.  Admittedly, it’s a very good idea — but things go downhill quickly.  For starters: the movie is introduced (literally opened with) a statement that necessarily limits your viewing of the movie to one of the two following possibilities: (A) you know the ending from the opening credits, or (B) you know the entire movie is based on a cheap (and obvious) trick (and probably can figure out what that trick is, because it’s not even that clever).  Another problem: it’s nice to see De Niro and Pacino side by side, but this movie could have been made with anybody.  Realistically, “Righteous Kill” and “Heat” are completely, totally incommensurable.  And for Righteous Kill, this is not a good thing.

(Another note: “Who ever heard of a cop serial killer?!” is not the movie’s second good idea.)

It’s a fair movie.  Everyone tries.  Performances are commendable all around.  The music’s fine.  But I could have walked out half-way through and not actually felt like I was missing much.

Rating: [•••] out of [•••••]

(2000) dir. Ryuhei Kitamura - w/ Tak Sakaguchi as Prisoner KSC2-303, and a bunch of other folks as random, ominous-sounding figures (e.g., “Motorcycle-riding yakuza with revolver,” and “Yakuza zombie in alligator-skin coat”). But you didn’t watch this for the characters. Yet.

Synopsis: Really?  Synopsis?

Review: Open with a bunch of– Oh, come off it.  The plot doesn’t really matter that much.  I mean, there is a plot.  Kind of.  The kind of plot you’d get by taking a “choose your own adventure” book and putting it in a blender and adding glue.  I’m not saying it’s total chance when parts of the movie actually make sense.  But seriously.  Think Kill Bill plus Highlander plus The Evil Dead plus The Matrix, minus the high production values (compared to this movie, Eraserhead has high production values).  The backstory: a couple “escaped prisoners” meet some Yakuza in the Resurrection Forest for some unspecified plot, which really doesn’t matter.  The Yakuza thugs don’t actually want to do what they’re told, some folks are shot/decapitated/etc.–and then, surprise!, come back to life.  A real shocker, what with it being the Resurrection Forest or what-have-you.  People run around, shoot at one another, fight zombies, and so on.  You can tell things get serious when the filters go wonky.  Everything goes red, or pink.  It’s like they’re in an alternate past dimension, maybe.  I don’t actually know.  What’s most astonishing is that, when there are flashbacks, they kind of help the story.  Sorry, the “story.”  Oh, and the plot twists!  Well, you’d be surprised, if you could actually follow the plot.  Which–you can follow the plot, it just doesn’t make all that much sense.  But it’s all in good fun.  And it is good fun.  You’ve never seen a collapsible samurai sword?  Or one with a laser sight?

Rating: [•••] out of [•••••] (Rating a movie like this is difficult.  Mileage per star may vary, based on your personal preferences, i.e., how much entertainment value you can actually derive from this kind of thing.)

(2005) dir Cristi Puiu - w/ Ion Fiscuteanu as the eponymous Lazarescu, and a few other people, hospitals.

Synopsis: Mr. Lazarescu feels unwell, and calls an ambulance.  His neighbors harangue him for drinking, his family doesn’t want much to do with him, and various doctors, nurses, and EMTs (their Romanian equivalents, anyway) poke fun and insult him.  The plot is both incredibly straightforward, and not.

Review: Given the title and synopsis, you’d expect this to be a depressing move–and you’d be right.  You’d also expect it to be slow, and you might be wrong.  “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” is meandering but methodical: not plodding, exactly, but certainly not speedy.  It is difficult to watch at parts, and bleak, and wrenching, but somehow also wry, and knowing, and rarely long.

I can’t entirely explain what makes this movie compelling.  There are brief glimmers of humanity, but they’re very often quashed by selfishness and indifference.  People are in a hurry.  They’re tired of being told things by others.  They don’t want other people to tell them what their jobs are, and they’re tired; it’s late.  And the old man probably just wants attention, they reason.  Stop drinking.  Don’t be so sick.  Get rid of that cat, why don’t you?  There is no good or evil in this story.  If there is any kind of hope, it surfaces in the most unlikely, unfulfillable ways.

Rating: [••••] out of [•••••]

I’d always assumed the criteria were loose (at best), but I didn’t realize that the only necessary condition of stating that a movie is “Based On” the book is a cursory glance at the book’s cover and a $150 million budget.

No, really; that’s it.

And I know “the book” is traditionally supposed to be better than the movie — but Darwin’s On The Origin of the Species has more in common with AVPR than Will Smith’s (and Francis Lawrence’s, or whoever’s responsible) “I Am Legend” does with Matheson’s.

The result is so unrecognizable, and so irredeemably awful, that–well, there’s nothing to say. The only tension in the movie was the hope, the slightest glimmer of possibility, that the filmmakers were bright enough to use the book’s best elements in a good way, or even a bad way.

Instead, they didn’t use them at all. They used a name, and a title, and a scary thing in the darkness.