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Hellboy II
Jul. 17th, 2008 11:16 pmOkay, so I suppose everyone is expecting an entry about Hellboy II, so I'll try to cough up some analysis. This movie is, oddly, the critics darling. But seeing as everyone also loved Wall-E, it's a weird year for critics. (This also makes me wonder if I'll hate Batman. Then again I am just about the only person I know who loved The Golden Compass, more on that later.) I think the key is something I read in Roger Ebert's review of Joe vs the Volcano... one of the reasons he liked it is that he 'hadn't seen this movie before.' I think on a purely visual level, both Wall-E and Hellboy offer something a little out of the ordinary visually. And for someone who watches movies for a living, that can be one heck of a whiff of fresh air.
I used to work on the film studies list at Cambridge before it was shut down and one of my boss' repetitive complaints was that film studies really lost out when literature departments, rather than art departments, got a hold of it. She saw films as a visual medium and thought it was to their detriment that they were held to the narrative standards of literature.
Visually Hellboy II is very fresh. Even if there is more than a hint of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and as someone mentioned in their review (Ebert, again?) something of the aliens from Star Wars. I was just relieved from the break from Tim Burton. (I'd never thought I'd say it but del Toro's world makes Burton's look both sanitized and flat.)
( Afraid of the dark? )
( Are we talking about love here, or the terrifying power of reproductive biology? )
* Another reason and Brother & I probably like Hellboy, along with the taboo demonic subject matter, is that we both respect the dark... more about this in another entry.
I used to work on the film studies list at Cambridge before it was shut down and one of my boss' repetitive complaints was that film studies really lost out when literature departments, rather than art departments, got a hold of it. She saw films as a visual medium and thought it was to their detriment that they were held to the narrative standards of literature.
Visually Hellboy II is very fresh. Even if there is more than a hint of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and as someone mentioned in their review (Ebert, again?) something of the aliens from Star Wars. I was just relieved from the break from Tim Burton. (I'd never thought I'd say it but del Toro's world makes Burton's look both sanitized and flat.)
( Afraid of the dark? )
( Are we talking about love here, or the terrifying power of reproductive biology? )
* Another reason and Brother & I probably like Hellboy, along with the taboo demonic subject matter, is that we both respect the dark... more about this in another entry.
