Up first, the new Hellboy movie with David Harbour. It came out earlier this year and there have been mixed reviews, heavily skewing to the negative. The movie didn't make back it's money so there probably won't be a sequel. That's too bad, I enjoyed the movie and found it more like the comic than the previous two movies. My only complaint was some of the music that's shouted over the top of some scenes. Story wise, it's got a darker take on Hellboy than the two previous movies and that was fine with me. The comics are a dark place filled with monsters and death. It's nice to see some of that up on the screen.
It's directed by Neil Marshall who had directed a few movies already. I've seen Dog Soldiers, The Descent and Doomsday, all fairly decent but none after 2008. Andrew Cosby wrote the script and it's really his first film script. He's written for TV, co-created the SYFY show Eureka and Boom! comics. Andrew has adapted his script partly from The Wild Hunt story that appeared back in 2009 and partly from three other stories. The Wild Hunt is a long story, taking up 8 issues of the Dark Horse comic book.
It's a good story but sadly by that time Mike Mignola had stopped drawing the comic, he continued to write the comic and do art for the covers, but the interior he had turned over to Duncan Fegredo. Other artists that worked on the Hellboy comic include Richard Corben, Scott Hampton, Kevin Nowlan. Mignola did the story and art for the 10 issue series of Hellboy In Hell. That would be an interesting movie.
I'm not sure why people didn't take to the movie but when I read stuff like "It’s also bloated with its many flashbacks and tangents introducing more characters and subplots than anyone could possibly follow." (Christy Lemire on Roger Ebert) I have to doubt the ability of the writer to understand what she's seeing. That's based on one review by the woman, but really, it's not that complicated of a story. I hate to think of how confused Christy would be reading the comic stories. They are much more complicated than this movie with plenty of flashbacks and tangents.
In the film the witch Nimue is being put back together by a pig guy called Gruagach. Hellboy has to stop that from happening. He's helped by Professor Broom and the BPRD, a psychic lady and Daniel Dae Kim. He's not helped by some English twats that try to kill him while on the Wild Hunt for some giants. They fail and pay the price. As Joe said: Kill the giant's first. Good advice.
There's plenty of action, and contrary to the critics, much of that CGI looks darn good. Same with the sets, there's plenty of detail and many things to break. Hellboy fighting demons means plenty of collateral damage. I was happy to watch the movie and I'll enjoy it again sometime in the future. It's the third take on Hellboy, the del Toro version, the animated version and now this one, and it's going to be one of my favorite stories on film. Go figure.
Our second movie turned out to be a nice surprise considering it was a made for the SYFY channel, it's a co-production with Lionsgate. It's a 2018 sequel to the first movie and ignores all the other sequels. It was written by Suzanne Keilly and directed by Steven Kostanski. Suzanne wrote an episode of the Ash Vs Evil Dead TV show back in 2016. Steven is part of the Astron-6 company and he directed Manborg and Father's Day. It's not an Astron-6 film but it shares some of their sensibilities, mixing humor with gore to good effect.
Warwick Davis played the leprechaun in the first 6 movies but didn't return for the 2014 sequel or this film. I've seen the first 6 films but not the 2014 sequel. I hear it's piss poor. Dylan "Hornswoggle" Postl was Warwick's replacement in the 2014 film and Linden Porco takes over the role in the newest film. I thought he did a great job, stealing just about every scene. He's from my home town of Winnipeg.
Some college students are doing a project in North Dakota, trying to make a house more green with solar panels etc. They don't know it but they are in the same house where the original movie took place. They accidentally release the leprechaun. Mark Holton, who plays Ozzie the local handy man and taxi driver, appeared in the original 1993 movie as the same character. He was also the mean kid who stole Pee-wee's bike in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.
When I said I was surprised by the movie earlier I meant it, there's a decent script that's somewhat self referential and funny. Not the sort of thing you expect on the SYFY channel. It might be the best original movie on the channel but I haven't seen their whole output over the years so I can't be certain. It's certainly head and shoulders above their average home made product. I even liked the homage to Evil Dead. Often I find those sorts of business annoying.
The cast was better than your average SYFY original and the characters were less annoying than I often find them to be in horror movies. There were plenty of jokes and some good goopy gore. Good ending and glad to have been there to see it. I'll certainly watch this one again.
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