Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy (2019)

Director: Neil Marshall 

Cast: Dave Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane

I have never cared for Rotten Tomatoes, like at all. They’ve been doing this thing where they’ll post an article based on the Rotten Tomatoes score saying such and such a movie has such a low Rotten Tomatoes score.  You know what I say to that? Who cares? More than once they have done that sort of thing, then I see the movie they have trashed and I end up enjoying it. So it’s getting to the point where if Rotten Tomatoes says a movie is going to be bad or has a low score, I immediately feel like I will more than likely like it. And I’m not just talking out of my caboose, I just saw Hellboy (2019) a film that Rotten Tomatoes and apparently the rest of the internet decided they were going to hate and I ended up having a blast with it. So let’s get that out of the way, this remake was fun as hell. It ain’t perfect, but it sure as hell wasn’t “worst film of the year” or “cinematic pond scum” as they were calling it. 

Hellboy is all about this evil witch who was so evil they cut her up into a million pieces and scattered her pieces throughout the land so that no one could put her back together again. You see, she’s so evil they chopped of her head and it still lives! Kind of like Vigo The Carpathian in Ghostbusters II (1989)? Anyhow, you just know someone is going to find all the pieces and resurrect her. This evil Blood Queen has world destroying aspirations and at the same time she’s looking for her King and she’s got her eye on good old Hellboy. Meanwhile, Hellboy is having he’s usual existential dilemas. Is he good? Is he evil? Is he meant to destroy the world or save it?

  

 The problem with this movie is that everyone is coming ready to rip it a new one, they are not even considering giving it a chance. Why? Because it’s not Guillermo del Toro directing, because it’s not Ron Perlman playing Hellboy, because there’s no Abe Sapien. But you know what, I’m fine with someone else directing because even though I love Del Toro’s movies, and I love his appreciation for all things horror and Lovecraft, I’m not a huge fan of his schmaltzy, over sentimental side. You know how he always manages to turn any one of his movies, even if its horror into a big old romance thing? Crimson Peak (2015) and the Hellboy movies are a great example of this. And to be honest, the romance between Hellboy and Liz never felt real to me, it felt forced. The good thing about Neil Marshall’s take on Hellboy is that it has none of that. It’s more of a horror film.

And in that sense, it is more faithful to Mike Mignola’s comic books, which have always been completely immersed in horror. Actually, this movie gets bonus points in my book for going into Hellboy's true origins about his real mother and father! No one had done that before. The cool thing about this movie is that it kind of takes all the different monsters we’ve seen throughout Mignola’s comics and incorporates them into one bombastic love letter to horror! We get witches, zombies, warlocks, the end of the world, giants, pig monsters, Baba Yaga, cannibalism…you name it, it’s in there. So the film is never boring. You can’t blame Guillermo del Toro for making his films romantic, because it’s part of  what makes a Del Toro film a Del Toro film, just like you can’t blame Neil Marshall for incorporating elements of King Aurthur and the Knights of the Roundtable into his films. I remember seeing Neil Marshall’s post-apocalyptic film Doomsday (2008) (now there’s a bad film!) and thinking why would he squeeze knights and horses into this movie? They just felt so out of place in a post apocalyptic film. And now he has also done it in Hellboy and I realize its his thing. Just like all directors have “their thing”, which they do in all their movies. On Hellboy, Marshall somehow found a way to incorporate Excalibur and Merlin into the story. Like I said, everything but the kitchen sink here. Is that a good or a bad thing? Depends. Do you like your movies fast paced? I personally dug the whole Excalibur angle to the movie. 

 Then there’s the issue of David Harbour; sure he aint Ron Perlman, from day one Harbour had huge shoes to fill. Did he pull it off? Well, I have to tell you guys that he is pretty much the same character. He is playing Hellboy. I really didn’t feel that big difference from Perlman to Harbour. Except that in some scenes it looks like Hellboy’s gained a couple of pounds. So I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with Harbour’s take on the character, I think he did a fine job. What does take a bit of getting used to is Hellboy’s new look. He looks slightly different, but no big deal either. The icing on the cake is Milla Jovovich as the Blood Queen, a new addition to the Hellboy universe. She makes a decent villain, one that attempts to acquire Hellboy’s affections. 

 Finally another awesome thing about this remake is that it has substantial gore and special effects. There’s this awesome scene in which Hellboy fights these giants that looks amazing, a show stopper, very interesting camera work going on in those scenes. There’s lots of decapitations, lots of bodies being ripped apart, I mean this movie really does earn its hard ‘R’ rating. This movie is certainly NOT for kids, just saying. So bottom line, I don’t get the hatred. It’s almost like ‘they’ don’t want you to see this movie, which obviously means you should. Powers that be don’t like horror films, have you noticed how much they’ve changed through the years? Have you noticed what is allowed and marketed in Hollywood? It’s films that make you want to go to church! If it’s about a demon who gets beaten by reading from the bible or by waving a cross at it, then the film is green lit! The Nun and The Conjuring come to mind. Hellboy goes against all that. This film goes against the grain, so of course, its going to get the hatred. I mean here we have a film that’s getting a huge theatrical release, and it’s a film in which a demon from hell is the hero of the picture! My conspiracy theory with this one is that this is why it’s being lambasted by the “critics”. Worst part is that a lot of the bashing happened even before the film was released? I mean, people who are saying its garbage are just going with the media, which apparently doesn’t want you to lose your faith or take it lightly. So anyways, is there anything negative I can say about this movie? Um, let’s see…it was fast paced? Story was a little generic? That’s about it? Too bad people tend to go with whatever crappy article they see posted on the internet. Oh wait, this movie has a kick ass rock and roll soundtrack, no wait that's a good thing. For a fun night at the movies, you can do a lot, lot worse than this. I say go have a hell of a time!  

Rating 4 out of 5 

Behind the Scenes Awesomeness: The Fifth Element (1995)

Conceptual Artwork 

Concept Art by Jean Paul Mezieres

Conceptual art by Jean Paul Gautier for Ruby Rod, back when Ruby Rod was going to be played by Prince 

Conceptual Artwork for Mandashowan spaceship by Jean Giraud 

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

Title: Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

Director: P.W. Anderson

Cast: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez , Shawn Roberts

Review:

The Resident Evil series of films have been an entertaining bunch of films for me; a guilty pleasure of sorts. They are the cinematic equivalent of reading a comic book, the action, the storylines, the dialog all very comic book like, which means that it’s very  unrealistic but at the same time fun! And here’s the weird thing, one would expect that with so many sequels these films would become watered down versions of themselves, each getting worse then the last, but low and behold I loved Resident Evil Extinction (2007), and I had loads of fun with Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010). Hoards of zombies, hot babes with telekinetic powers and a post apocalyptic setting…what’s not to like right? So anyways, here comes the fifth installment in the series, needless to say, considering how much fun I had with the previous installments, I was pumped for this fifth film. Did it deliver? Hell no it didn’t deliver; this is without a doubt the worst of the Resident Evil movies! Why? Read it and weep my friends, read it and weep.

This film picks up right where the last one left off, with Umbrella blowing up ‘Arcadia’ an installation in which  Umbrella had been conducting some experiments with humans, or something like that. But none of that matters, if you think this sequel gives a damn about where the series had been going up to this point, then your dead wrong. You think that this sequel will continue the story arc, or that it’s all going somewhere to tell a grand story, well it aint happening! This sequel doesn’t give  damn about previous films, it eschews with whatever happened previously,, twists things around and gives you an entirely different story, which if you been keeping tabs, is the way Anderson likes it. It changes things so drastically, that you'll feel as if nothing makes sense! I've noticed that director Paul W. Anderson likes to pull you in with a show stopping cliffhangers (like he did in Afterlife) so he can pull you in for the next movie, then he goes and tells a completely different tale. In Retribution, we forget all about ‘Arcadia’ in the first five minutes of film and continue with another story in which Alice is trapped in one of Umbrella Corporations testing facilities. It seems like the Red Queen is the one in charge of Umbrella, and she means to eradicate the entire human race. As usual, it's up to Alice to stop her, but first, she must escape this prison! Will she make it out alive in order to save humanity?

To me, this fifth installment is just sad because I’d been having tons of fun with this series of films up to this point; only to have director P.W. Anderson drop the ball completely with this fifth installment. Not that these movies were ever ‘deep’ or anything, I had fun with the stylish action, the zombies, the look of the film and I was content with the story moving along little by little amongst all the action and zombies. And this one has all that slow mo and action...but something feels off. With Retribution, you’ll get the feeling that director Paul W. Anderson isn’t even trying to deliver anything remotely good, or interesting, or even entertaining, with this film he's simply streeetching things out to make a couple more millions. He’s certainly showing signs of fatigue when it comes to these films; you get the feeling he’s making them just for the money, that there’s no real passion behind them. The film feels like empty calories, but hey, even that can be fun. I did enjoy the fast paced action and the ass kicking fights, but at the end of the day, it all felt kind of redundant. 

Number one problem for me with this film is that there is almost no story to this installment, no mystery, nothing to pull us in. The way the film is structured is that Umbrella captures Alice and sends her to this facility that is divided into different ‘fake’ countries. One part of the facility simulates New York, one simulates Russian, one China, one looks like Suburbia U.S.A. and so forth. You see, in order for Umbrella to sell the antidote for the T-Virus and make kajillions, they orchestrated these fake zombie attacks, and showed them to the world, assuring a sure sell in all countries. After seeing these fake zombie attacks, every country in the world would want the antidote. But the virus got out of their control and you all know how that went, the world became populated by zombies. So Alice is trapped in this facility. Umbrella is trying to reprogram her because she’s the rebel, the one who thinks for her self; but they can’t reprogram her, she’s too strong. She soon finds a way to escape her cell and boom, the rest of the film is her trying to escape this place. In this way it feels a bit like Stuart Gordon’s Fortress (1992) or David Twohy’s The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), where the main characters main mission is to escape a super prison. Unfortunately, it also feels like your watching a video game, passing to the next level, and beating a boss at the end. 

That would all be fine and dandy, because hey, who doesnt love a bit of empty eye candy every once in a while, sadly, there’s no reason to care for anyone. These characters are like clones, simply there to push the next pointless action scene to the next level. But even a video game will have more of a plot then this film. Retribution felt like filler, there’s these boring fights that go on and on and on…there are not a lot of zombies in this film either which is what I loved about Extinction and Afterlife, on this one there’s more ‘Bio Hazards’, Umbrella Corporations monstrous experiments. Paul W. Anderson is the one who gets all the blame for this lifeless movie, because he not only directs these, but he also writes them. In this case, it felt as if Anderson was simply going through the motions, not even trying to pull off a good, involving film. Not only that, things just don’t make sense this time around. For example in all previous films,  Wesker is the main villain of the piece, on this one he does a 360 and becomes a good guy trying to help Alice? What the? What about Wesker’s plans with Alice? Who the hell cares, all previous storylines have been dropped, suddenly Wesker "doesn't work for umbrella anymore" we now have a new villain. Forget that Alice and Wesker have been enemies for the past four films, that they had been trying to kill each other since they first met. Now suddenly Wesker needs Alice, like I said, no sense at all. Story lines are dropped and changed simply to shock you with the next cliff hanger ending that will assure your butt will be there in the theater come next sequel. In that sense these films are not unlike a comic book, leaving you with that cliffhanger so you'll buy the next issue. 

The action scenes are so freaking pointless, nobody is in peril on this movie. Everything is fake or cgi, characters escape danger in zero point five seconds, there’s no tension, no feeling of dread. Huge monsters appear and are dispatched in a matter of seconds. And the  matrix style fighting has to be given some sort of break in movies! Something new is needed, seeing characters fighting the same exact way, doing the same exact moves, gets boring and redundant, by the way, thats what most of this movie feels like, more of the same. Another bummer: characters are not developed in the least! In the least! I can guarantee you will not care about a single character on this film. For example, Anderson actually brings back a bunch of characters from the first film only to kill them off in minutes? Characters are disposable on this film, simply empty vessels to kill. Case in point: Michelle Rodriguez’s participation on this film. It’s so pointless! Remember how in the first film she developed this friendship with Alice and you actually cared when she turns into a zombie? On this one, she is no one. She’s a character with zero personality.  Why is she even here? Just to add another popular actress to the film, so they can sell it more effectively. As far as the story goes, she is not an essential part and neither is anyone else on board by the way, these are just characters who shoot guns. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with brainless action, but come on, make it at the very least interesting! Or funny! A good example of a fun brainless movie would be TheExpendables 2 (2012)! Now that was a violent, brainless yet completely fun flick! The only saving grace for me with this movie is the always beautiful Milla Jovovich, she looks great on this one and kicks ass like there's no tomorrow, sadly, she's the only shinning light on this post apocalyptic abyss. 

To top things off, Anderson continues aping other films he admires over and over again. In Extinction he was aping Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) and Day of the Dead (1985), in Afterlife he aped Escape from New York (1981) and on this one he borrows extensively from James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) right down to having some scenes where Alice is ready to escape, but has to go back to rescue a little girl from the clutches of a monster. By the way, the little girl is in a cocoon, just like Newt in Aliens. He also borrows heavily from Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004). Remember that whole sequence in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead where the main female character is waking up to a suburbia filled with chaos? Anderson does it here all over again, almost exactly the same way, but with Alice. I’ve noticed how much Anderson does this in his films. He does it so shamelessly, he is kind of like a cinematic parasite, I mean one thing is to be influenced by a film and another is to copy whole scenes from a film you admire. Doesn’t Anderson have enough originality to come up with his own film?

A scene from Dawn of the Dead (2004), sorry, I mean Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

Sadly, this film was a huge, huge disappointment for me. The story goes no where, there is no advancement, previous films seem to be ignored, new storylines introduced forcibly simply to keep pumping out movies, there’s no flow to this film. It feels like a bunch of video games stages strung together and called a film; it felt like filler to me. Even though they squeezed the characters of Ada Wong and Leon S. Kennedy both of which appeared in the second Resident Evil video game back in 1998, the film still feels like filler; like an unimportant film in a franchise. This my friends was a sequel that literally had nothing to say. I’ll give Anderson this, he has impressed and entertained me with his films in the past, for example, I still love Event Horizon (1997), and on Retribution he still shows a knack for handling effects work very well, the opening sequence which starts in slow motion reverse and then goes and shows us the way it really happened in real time again...freaking sweet. So this movie while filled with imperfections, still demonstrates Anderson has a bit of a filmmaker in him. Sadly, with Retribution he is showing signs of fatigue as a director; I sincerely hope he hasn’t lost his love for filmmaking; for doing films that are worth while, for making good genre films. The ending is a grabber, it leaves the doors open for what could potentially be an interesting sequel, but considering how bad this fifth installment is, we’ll be lucky if we even get a sixth, which is  supposed to be about humanities last stand against the undead. Let’s hope Anderson takes a stand against lazy, bad filmmaking as well. This film is enjoyable thrash, but I'm very demanding of my thrashy movies, here's hoping the next and potentially final installment will be a 'one-up' when compared to this one. 

Rating: 2 out of 5   

Resident Evil: Afterlife 3-D (2010)

Title: Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

Director/Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson

Cast: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter

Review:

I’ve never connected the Resident Evil film franchise with the video games. To me they have always been a different entity altogether. Paul W.S. Anderson, this franchises puppet master has never seemed to me like a director who’s interested in doing a faithful adaptation of these games. He simply set out to make a series of zombie films, which as it turns out have become a very successful franchise. The use of the name ‘Resident Evil’ is simply there to ride on the games success. Because a film named after one of the most successful video game franchises ever is destined to pull in an audience member or two. This fourth installment alone, thanks to the benefit of the 3-D wave that’s sweeping the nation (and the raise in ticket prices that follow it) is well on its way to making its money back. And another sequel is surely on the way. But hey, let’s get down to the bottom line, to the nitty gritty: was this sequel any good?

Storyline this time around picks up exactly where the last film (Resident Evil: Extinction) left us: with Alice waking up and reprogramming an army of clones ready to take on the Umbrella Corporation, which they do. Unfortunately, Wesker (the head of Umbrella Corporation) escapes! But not before he annihilates all the clones with one gigantic anti-matter bomb! Now Alice must survive the wasteland, and the undead on her own! Will she ever find the elusive city of ‘Arcadia’? The last human city, which is said to be free of infection and zombies? Is it true? Is there such a place?

Dont like where the last movie you made was headed? Blow everything up with anti-matter on the next one!

I like the continuity this series has, one starts off where the other one left off. You feel like the story is defenetly unfolding, at a snails pace, but it is unfolding. The thing about these series of films is that they never really dive too much into the ‘story’ or the mythology that these films have created for themselves. Its as if they want to stretch things just enough to keep your interest, entertain you, and then leave you with a cliffhanger so you’ll want to come back for the next sequel. It kind of reminds me of those cliffhanger serials from the 50’s. They also remind of when I read a comic book, you always gotta come back for the next issue, because you just have to know what happens next. But inspite of the fact that these series of films are pretty shallow entertainment, I still enjoy them. You just have to go in knowing that you are not going to get much in the story department. You gotta go into these films knowing that you are simply going get a decent dosage of stylish action and zombie mayhem.

Does it work as a zombie movie? Well, truth be told I sometimes felt like the filmmakers forgot that this was supposed to be a zombie movie. So much so that when I finally did get to see some zombies I literally said out loud "finally!" There are moments in the film where there is not a zombie in sight! We don’t see enough of the undead! Cool thing is that when we finally do get to see them they are many. I loved those scenes with hoards and hoards of zombies trying to break into the building; I just wish we could have seen more of them. It seems to me that the zombie threat is one of the driving forces behind the whole franchise, behind the games even. As it turns out, we only get one great zombie sequence on this film, and that’s it. But to the films credit, it’s a pretty memorable one, I really enjoyed it. Plus on this film the zombies have mutated and have these extra set of teeth that emerge from their mouths, like tentacles. Pretty cool image, kind of reminded me of the reapers from Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II (2002). But after the big zombie scene, the story focuses more on going into one of Umbrella Corporation’s science labs and finding Wesker, the head honcho.

Speaking of Wesker, the main villain, I was disappointed with the way they portrayed him. He is supposed to be the main villain in the film, and he is more of a behind the scenes type of character. Problem is that for a villain, he was the least threatening character in the film. You expect a character like this guy to be an imposing memorable villain, but he wasn’t. What a let down! With Wesker we keep getting this tease, like he is going to transform into some kind of creature or something, but it never happens. Sadly. I guess we’ll get to see that in the upcoming fifth installment, which according to Milla Jovovich is “definitely happening”.

Not all is fun an games though, this film does have one gigantic flaw in my book. And its something that Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) also suffered from: Paul W.S. Anderson's need to rip off entire scenes from other movies. I know, I know, you are going to say that if guys like Quentin Tarantino can do it, then why not this guy? Well, thing is Tarantino gets inspiration from all those movies from the 70’s and then goes and does his own thing, gives it his own twist. Paul W.S. Anderson does not do this. Anderson films the exact same scene, shot by shot and then calls it his own. Which sucks in my book! In Resident Evil Extinction, the film that came before this one, he was ripping off entire sequences from Day of the Dead (1985) and The Road Warrior (1981). On Resident Evil: Afterlife you will see whole sequences that you’ll swear were copy pasted from The Matrix (1999). Cause they were. We get bullet time (again), we get chicks falling out of windows in slow mo (dressed in black of course) as they shoot their guns. I mean the word that comes to mind is 'blatant'. As in blatant rip off. At least Tarantino has a sense to rip off movies from the 70’s. Theres a chance that a huge part of the audience wont even know where he is getting his stuff from. But Anderson steals from The Matrix! A movie everyone is familiar with! Other films that got ripped off on this one: Dawn of the Dead (1978), Land of the Dead (2005) and Escape from New York (1981). So you’ve been warned, don’t expect a completely original film.

3-D Ninja Stars coming at ya!

So Resident Evil: Afterlife is pretty much empty calories. But its pretty looking empty calories. As if Milla Jovovich wasn’t a special effect onto herself already, the 3-D element was solid. I’ll give it that much. Milla’s guns seem to jump right out of the screen, the fights and effects were all enhanced, it was a fun 3-D movie, I loved seeing that horde of zombies on 3-D, I just wish that they had taken advantage of the 3-D element a bit more, especially when it came to the zombies. Alas, I was left wanting on this department. Still, lots of ninja stars, swords, and bullets are hurled our way thanks to the goofy glasses phenomenon. For the 3-D alone I’d say this would be worth going to the movies for. I guess when 3-D is done right and is not half assed it can be extremely fun. Just know that this is a comic book movie every step of the way, characters will do unbelievable things, and emphasis will be placed on making things look 'cool' rather than making things make sense. The ending is a cliffhanger which will no doubt make you return for yet another sequel and  I’m all for it! This franchises last two films, though not mind blowing in any sense of the word have been entertaining in my book.

 

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5